When it comes to ground design I'd say there are still several camps out. When it comes to the supplies themself, for high quality, low noise analog you need to generate your analog supplies from LDOs that are separate from the digital supplies. I think that is generally well accepted, it's the ground plane design where things get hairy.
15 years ago, when I worked for a video SoC manufacturer, they designed PCBs such that all digital ground and analog ground planes were kept separate, and connected by an inductor at a single point.
10 years ago when I worked for a video broadcast hardware manufacturer, they also connected separate planes at a single point without an inductor, and used current steering techniques to make sure the digital currents wouldn't follow paths near the analog paths in the first place. The belief was the inductor didn't provide zero impedance across all frequencies between the ground planes, and this caused some performance and EMI issues.
I've spent the last 5 years at a defence an aerospace equipment manufacturer. They take it one step further and use a unified ground plane for digital and analog ground. The problem with separate planes is all the various cutouts to ensure isolation results in not enough low impedance return paths for high current digital signals and they would still spill into analog or radiate EMI. With a unified ground plane, extreme care must be taken with part placement, signal routing, and placing no-coppper lanes to steer currents where you need them to go. To me, this is the best approach I've seen, though it makes the PCB design itself far more complicated.
To re-iterate, I think all 3 (and possible more) strategies are still employed in industry, so the jury is still out on what's "Best". I hope this forum can continue to be a place for people to discuss different approaches with out the need for insults, or talking people down. Of course, this is the Internet so that hope may be futile.
I think to answer summers question about what happens if you remove the inductor, my answer is it depends on the PCB layout, and with no inductor there, is that the preferred path for any digital return currents?
I think we can all agree the best idea is to try as many things as you can and see what works for your situation. The best way to have great ideas is to have many ideas!