In outdoor rock climbing smacking rocks is an integral part of ensuring the rock you're trusting your life with is in fact worth trusting your life with.

Only if you go outside well-secured sport climbs where you don't have to think about that (but still its a good idea to check the state of bolts for any visible damage due to rot and rust). And even then, some rocks are hollow and still can sustain next 5000 years of literally any climbing on them, some are more solid and will come off if somebody over 80kg hangs on them. So its more about calming one's mind rather than objective good quality test.

Most folks in Europe climb only sport routes, or then do some variant of proper alpinism once on wild unsecured terrain.

It's pretty sobering hitting a rock that looks like an integral part of the wall and it just goes THUNK.