Long and short of it... there's going to be people at varying levels of interest and commitment. From the 'never used a skill outside a macro to save their life' all the way to 'knows every nuance for even the unused cross-class and can craft the hardest recipes with no macros and their eyes closed'. And everything in between.

Personally, I'm at the lower end. I do it for repairs and making stuff here and there but I just don't like FFXIV's crafting system, IMO it's one of the worse ones out there. So macros are nice. I'll look into the other guides if I need to but I would probably just avoid anything that needs that. To each their own...