Not defending them. But ill take their position for a second. I give x amount of work and expect you to finish it. And you do. But if that work takes you 2 hours and the rest of the day you do nothing it just means I can give you more work because 2 hours is just abysmal. So I wanna know about it.
So Indeed you can connect a 3d printer to a computer. But the conversation between them is limited to the comp sending the STL file to be printed. Thats it.
My practice is more strict though. I do not connect the 3d printer to the comp, nor to wifi. For security reasons. Its a device that can heat up and move fairly easily and none of the existing printers today have proper security measures.
And frankly its not necessary to connect a printer to a pc. Its a stand alone device that works perfectly fine as it is. You physically take the flash drive that contains STL files only in text form and put It on the printer. Theres nothing easier than this in my opinion.
Unless of course you run a 3dprinting farm which is a different cass.