Arduino is a development board with low overhead
True that. I just started playing Arduino (and electronics in general) about a month and a half ago. I think in total I've spent maybe $90 on projects so far. (got my nifty thermistor datalogging rig, most of that cost was the 8gb Micro SD card. Got me a shift register thing that produces random light shows on my wall.) Heck for most of my resistors and other components I recycle them out of an old "tee hee, coilgun" project I had where I went to wallgreens and asked them if they had any disposable cameras and they gave me like 70 of them for free. So pretty low overhead is a bit of an understatement.