I read the Art of Electronics as a beginner. A university educated EE should have had pretty much everything covered in their studies so it would be surprising to me that would be their reference of choice.
I still think the convenience of a laptop or a PC beats the Arduino. That said, I'm not up to date on what sort of I/O you can get (e.g. USB based I/O) and that's the cost. I have to imagine there are options that are not that expensive.
Horowitz and Hill is used for 300 and 400 level university courses. It assumes a lot of prerequisite physics and engineering knowledge. I’m not using that definition of beginner.
> I'm not up to date on what sort of I/O you can get
I have to imagine you know you’re allowed to just not post, right.
