What crafting class should I pick up first?

[Niwashi]

#0 Use macros. After a summer overseas with bad internet, it's just too damn exhausting to manually craft all the time. I'm macro-ing now as I type.

This is eventually good advice. I use macros quite a bit myself. But personally, I find them significantly less useful while leveling, particularly early leveling.

For one thing, each new level you hit is likely to change your rotations, either because you get a new skill, or you gain enough CP to include another skill use. And early on, you're going through levels fairly fast. It's just not worth the hassle to keep changing your macros each time, keeping track of which of them to use with which class (since they'll generally be at slightly different levels).

Also, since macros can't make effective use of Excellent/Good/Normal/Poor conditions, they're most effective when making lots of stuff that's well below your current level (where you can just outpower its difficulty without needing to make the best use of conditions). Someone just starting off isn't going to be that far above the recipes they're making for a while.

So I'd say, while you're leveling up, craft directly, learning how the skills work together. Keep macros in mind for later, once your level and CP have stabilized to something you're going to be staying with for a while, and when you're leveled well above the recipes you want to craft in bulk.