"Instead I'd argue it's incredibly expensive and should be treated as such."

Using a cross-platform framework isn't incredibly expensive in time or performance cost. It's done by one-person projects and large businesses alike. There's issues but that's way overstating it.

Then, there were 4GL's like Lansa and Windev that made it easier to do than creating non-portable, native applications. Those weren't used for performance-sensitive code, though. Mostly business apps.