I'm working with the Illustrator 29.8.1 update. I'm not really noticing anything different with the Pen tool (which isn't a bad thing).
Illustrator's Pen tool is pretty powerful, thanks in part to keyboard shortcuts that can be used to move/edit anchor points and path segments while they are still being drawn. This setup is made even better and more powerful with the keyboard shortcuts for zooming in/out and hand-panning the view. Virtually all of those keyboard shortcuts can be accessed with the left hand while the right hand remains on the mouse (or stylus/pen).
Macromedia Freehand was the only other vector drawing application that had a pen tool with keyboard shortcut operations similar to those in Illustrator. The Pen tool in Affinity Designer has some similar keyboard shortcuts, but the zooming in/out setup is different (the "Z" key has to be toggled constantly). The setup in Illustrator is just much more graceful, IMHO. The Bezier tool in CorelDRAW is pretty clunky.
May be there was a hidden issue in my version of Ai. When I updated this morning to 29.8.1 the synopsis of the changes they made showed changes to the Pen tool. I gave it a try and I noticed an immediate difference. I tried it on the same object I used over the weekend. Life suddenly got easier. I will take you and Monika's comments regarding no change to the Pen though. Thanks guys.