To answer the OP's question a little more in depth (from my perspective)
Yes, you can live without scribble strips I have done so for the last 2½ years, and I still love the unit.
That said, I think the physical user interface is the AX8's biggest short-coming. My biggest wish for an AX8-2 (should it ever come) is the AxeIII's big color screen and menu layout along with the functionality of the FC's
I really think, the usability of the AX8 is limited by the (lack of) button and front panel functionality.
Above, people say that you should learn your layout to a point where you don't have to look. Well yeah, that is nice, if it is possible. But that requires you to only use one preset or at least use presets with the same effects and button layout. I could never do that. I use way too many effects for that to work.
Example, say you have two drive blocks and you want to turn on your tube screamer. Well on the front panel, both drive blocks are called DRV, so you have no way of knowing, which one is the tube screamer. If you use the X/Y functionality, you are completely screwed, because you cannot know, whether your TS is on the X or Y state of which footswitch. Same story with delays (and most other FX). You want to turn on your single dotted delay, but you cannot know which is the dotted delay, and which is the huge lead delay. On the FCs you can make a scribble line for each channel of the FX, so it is easy to see, which effect you actually turn on. Combine it with color coding, and you can quickly identify which pedal will do the job.
I have chosen to use one preset per song, and I make scenes for each sound I need in the song. The most complicated preset uses 5 sounds in a single song. So I have five buttons in my preset layout: S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5. I lay them out chronologically, so whatever sound I need first is S1, and so forth. It works, but still, when I get to sound 5 (often the solo) and have to go back to the pre-chorus sound afterwards, I need to guess/count which number sound the pre-chorus is. This would be so easily solved with scribble strips saying, intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, solo - It would be even easier with color coding. I could set it up such that blue is always the verse, red is always the chorus, and the pre-chorus could always be orange.
So yes, you can live without scribble strips and color coding, but when people here try to downplay its usefulness and say that it will make you stare at your feet all night, it is just plain wrong.