Right...it's what I call 'adaptive multitracking': assembling sources as discrete track sources, but not in a fixed linear form such as on a 2" reel. DAWs, especially ones like Ableton that blur the line between DAW and instrument, can be made to work like old-school multitracking, but you miss the whole point of having the temporal pliability that something like DAWs afford.
I still know how to cut to 2" (or any multitrack tape, really), and can even cut up 2" with a splicing block and tape (terrifying to do, actually...so much can go wrong), but I won't voluntarily go back to that working method. It's like apples and oranges when compared to working in digital.