My reference to Visual Basic rather comes from a large number of projects I saw that equated the GUI with the functionality. For example, I played with am "80% complete" program to translate between English and Latin texts. The New, Open, Save, and Exit buttons were all working. As soon as someone wrote the method for the Translate button, the program would be complete.
Visual Basic and 3D printing have both given thousands of people the opportunity to do things quickly and independently that they'd have never had the opportunity to try before. However, they've both also suffered the hype of those who assumed that their understanding of the surface was an understanding of the whole.
It's about as ridiculous as implying that because cars are built by robots, soon your Roomba will be building a car.
Secondly, I'd argue that the same statement applied to 3D printers is also false. Just because the output of hobby level plastic extruding printers is limited to certain shapes and materials doesn't mean that the process as a whole is flawed. I've played around with titanium springs, brackets and other interestingly shaped pieces which simply couldn't be produced by any other manufacturing process. 3D printing (in particular selective laser sintering) is going to produce a step change in the aerospace industry.
Finally, as an aside hobby and low cost plastic 3D printers are very useful for some applications. Producing brackets and mounting plates is considerably streamlined with a 3D printer. It's a useful technology for particular applications. Its not the fault of plastic additive manufacturing that journalists are getting more excited than they should be about it.
To a degree the technology reminds me of Visual Basic. The technology makes it very easy to make something that looks like what you want, but it doesn't bring you any closer to actually making what you wanted.