I have no love for what you call "guilds" either. That said, there's a huge difference between learning to run machines casually and through some combination o

I have no love for what you call "guilds" either. That said, there's a huge difference between learning to run machines casually and through some combination of schooling and supervised hands-on. Example: TIG and MIG welding. I have both. I can make decent welds. They look pretty. Learned on my own just futzing around here and there. Yet, I would never, in a million years, trust my welding to, say, build even a light aircraft. I, objectively speaking, don't know what I am doing when compared to the aerospace certified welders I walk by every day. > The mythology of it being so hard is a fantasy I disagree. Perhaps scale and application is the difference here. A gadget for a Kickstarter campaign? Sure, anyone can screw around at a maker space and get one or a few done. Something like a Dyson vacuum cleaner that needs to be designed and manufactured at scale and be safe and durable in the field? No way. This requires experienced engineering specializations from EE, ME design to manufacturing engineers, materials engineers, test engineers, machinists, mold makers, process engineers, etc. Way different reality. Move up another level to Medical or Aerospace and things get even more interesting. And some industries are just awe-inspiring in terms of their manufacturing process. One such product are LCD displays. A typical factory for the LCD displays on your computer costs somewhere in the range of two billion dollars to build. Two billion. It's a massive undertaking. Automation, clean rooms, robotics and all kinds of specialized processes designed to optimize quality, cost and yields. To compare that to the software "manufacturing" process is as silly as one can get. Will AI help streamline some of these processes over time? Sure. Of course. You are still going to need a two billion dollar plant to make LCD's and similarly scaled facilities and equipment to make cars, radios, batteries, ovens, etc. Look at making cars as another example. Even if the CAD-to-CNC process was completely automated and perfectly executed it would still be less than a rounding error in the context of the cost, processes and complexity of manufacturing a car.