Yankee .. If you don't ask, you don't get. I've done a visual into Paris CDG on an exceptionally quiet day, but admittedly it caused some discussion / surprise with ATC. Many regional and quieter international airports in the UK and Europe have no problem with accommodating a visual, in Australasia they are more common and as you know in the US in very busy places like LAX and SFO they are almost the norm in appropriate met conditions - a cynic would say a proven method of passing 'the buck' for separation to the flight crew. In Asia however... can't say I've ever done one.
There is no doubt that as the years pass we pilots are expected to fly the aircraft with more and more automation (for instance things I did on the 744 are verboten on the 777), and we generally won't get much (or in some cases any?) practice doing things without automation except once every few months in a hurried sim session. Yet we have always been expected by employer, regulator and the public, to miraculously maintain a highly proficient level of hand-flying ability.
Fortunately, I've noticed a new emphasis in the last year or so, at least with my current employer where there is open recognition of the issue - we're now getting some delightfully tricky manual flight scenarios built into the usual array of failures and HF issues.
Easy to make quick judgments about what occurred in SFO. However, lets wait for the report.