> As a 3D designer, your friend still had to learn and master all the fiddly and annoying aspects of 3D design, and spend time getting good at it.

Note *of 3D design*. The art schools, however, require abilities that are adjacent to 3D design, like the ability to create that design from physical clay with your physical hands, but are NOT an actual prerequisite for good design work.

Likewise, yes the ability to write reasonable code must be learned, but telling Claude what to do (and recognizing its misteaks and design blunders; just remember the thing is trained on *all* code, not just good code) is different enough from the ability to write a working CMake recipe for your project by hand that requiring the latter before you're allowed to be proficient with the former is just plain dumb.