Totally.
I was a hardboot guy back in the day. Got mocked often. People seem to forget that there used to be dozens of kind of snowboards and boot/binding combination. Then profit and ease of manufacturing outranked any desire to support the myriad specialists and now everyone thinks snowboarding is riding a 160cm twin tip freeride board with soft boots.
Once dialled, hardboots are so comfortable, warm and so wickedly easy in/out of bindings. Plus my old Raichles were barely stiffer than your stiffer soft boots. It's weird that people have such revulsion towards them.
Splitboarding with softboots is a damn inelegant solution that could be so well handled by the right hardboot. Sadly the numbers just aren't there yet that any manufacturer could reasonably build one. Luckily some of the softer AT boots are pretty damn close. It's unfortunate to buy $600+ boots and start modifying them…
There's nothing better than an Orangina after cheating death with Digger.