Performance Degrading Placing Join In WHERE Instead Of FROM Block (using =, =*, *=)

Hello folks,
first of all I really don't know how you gurus call this way of
writing joins:

SELECT
A.FIELD,
B.FIELD
FROM
TABLE_A A,
TABLE_B B
WHERE
A.ID_FIELD = B.ID_FIELD

I find this way very useful and readable. It works also with left and
right Joins (using *= or =* instead of = )

A friend of mine found that the inner join way (using = ) in Access is
much more slower than using the classic INNER JOIN TABLE ON FIELD
sintax. My question is: was MSSQL Server studied for using the short
way, or it is just a workaround found by someone? Is there a
performance degrade folllowing this way?

TIA,
tK