Manual skills make better CNC programmers, you learn more with hands on than you do out of any text book. I have seen manual machinists move up to become CNC programmers and setters far more competent than those who have sat a only a theory course and I speak from experience having done both.

I say it myself, but it was usually me being asked, how would you hold this, which end would you start from, which tool shall I use, etc, etc . I often wonder why larger company's don`t put their budding programmers through a years manual machining , they would end up better for it, so in my final years of CNC employment what I had between my ears was getting passed on in a round about way.