Yeah as @SFE-Viz says, auto smooth never actually went away, it just changed how it works.
Instead of the old days of hunting down the Auto Smooth settings in the properties panel, we now have a modifier instead.
The only thing I will say is, mark sharp edges still has it’s uses and are not really destructive. Using an angle based approach with auto smooth may get you 90% of what you need sharp, adding a few edges as mark sharp will give you a more accurate result.
Simply, Auto smooth is a good result, but may not be perfect in all cases.
