Every photographer has their processes and ideas, but just to point out @rob..
there are no rules in photography or art in general, photography is an art, you can do whatever you want and if people like your concepts.. then good for them, but because some extremely well known previous photographer from back in the day didn’t do it doesn’t mean it’s just right.
Just saying, everyone has an artists license, and just because hardware can’t do it, software is capable and makes up for it.
Tone mapping is fun because it turns the world into something so surreal it’s just fun.
Also, plain HDR not tone mapping is how the eye typically sees anyway, thus the achievement of some HDR photographers that try to get what the eye sees, tone mapping on the other hand as I said above is just to get something plain out of this world.