Apart from blow up printers, the one scariest thing for me about a slicer is losing settings. You spend hours getting your printer dialed in, specific profiles per material and then…
You update your slicer software and it all goes away. I have now learned Cura does this. And does this a lot. Forum posts abound about it. Friends recommend I switch to Prusa because it happened to them. Unfortunately too late for me to write down my old settings, and they’re apparently not in the ~/.config/cura folder anymore. Nice.
A slicer is the program that takes a 3D model and “translates it” into the sequence of actions that the printer needs to do to create that model. It is called a slicer because 3D printers build the models in horizontal layers, or in other words, in slices.
Cura is one of the slicer programs available. There are many, divided between slicers for FDM printers (the ones that print from a spool of material) and slicers for resin printers (the ones that print from the disgusting goop that comes in bottles). Your printer tends to be packaged with a suggested one but usually you can use any of the appropriate type.
Slicing is one of the most important parts of 3D printing, and it tends to be the difference between ending up with a pristine figure or a very blurry one. In the most extreme cases, good slicing will be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful print.