That really depends upon the context. Many learn electronics in a classroom environment. Even for those who learn electronics independently, it has been possibl

That really depends upon the context. Many learn electronics in a classroom environment. Even for those who learn electronics independently, it has been possible to get new oscilloscopes that work at audio frequencies for well under $100 for many years. It looks like scopes that operate upto 20 MHz have been available for under $100 for a couple of years. They aren't great, but they are still powerful tools for learning. And while scopes do take time to learn, learning about scopes themselves will convey a lot of fundamental information about electronics. I also wouldn't underestimate the difficulty in learning how to use microcontrollers. While using something like Arduino (boards, shields, development tools, and libraries) may be straight forward, the learning curve rises steeply as soon as you try to do anything truly independently. More steeply, I would suggest, than learning how to use an osilloscope. Besides, most of those development boards cost a lot more than a bare chip.