>If software isn't a trade what is it?

A profession. Trades are things like electrician/plumbing/carpentry that you can typically become resonably competent in 2 or so years of training.

You can't in software development?

	▲	Jtarii 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		A Software Engineering degree typically takes 3+ years to get and then you have internships and onboarding that means it could take a novice ~5 years to actually start contributing in a meaningful way at a company starting from scratch.