Pie menus addon is a game changer for that though. Hold Q, push your mouse toward the desired view direction, and let go. It's honestly even faster than moving my hand from the mouse to the numpad.
You still lose the 4/8/6/2 shortcuts for orbiting in 15° increments, but I never used those much. It gives quick access to front/back/left/right/top/bottom preset views. The ortho/perspective toggle is in a second-layer "More" menu which isn't ideal, but quick enough action for something that I'm not changing back and forth all the time.
You can also navigate the pie menus with number keys, so typing q-1-4 will pull up the menu, open the second level, and toggle ortho/perspective.
In addition to being quicker than moving my hand to the numpad, I also like that it keeps my desktop UI consistent with my laptop where I don't have a numpad either.
Outside of the numpad and pie menus, 2.8 has the clickable view gizmo in the top right corner for people who like to click on stuff. That's a nice addition for new users, it's certainly the most discoverable of the three options.
Also I use it for software like Blender for camera controls. (Though this is probably more of a niche use case...)