The BASIC Stamp Discovery Kit ($160), for example, comes with a software manual and the “What's a Microcontroller” book as well as a photo sensor, servo motor, piezoelectric speaker, a 7-segment ...

All microcontroller development boards — including the Arduino — owe a debt to the BASIC Stamp. It is the grandfather to the Arduino, and it is very, very old.

The BASIC Stamp modules cannot store many variables in memory, but the available memory should suffice to get you started. Parallax has many excellent books about microcontrollers, signals, sensors, ...

All microcontroller development boards — including the Arduino — owe a debt to the BASIC Stamp. It is the grandfather to the Arduino, and it is very, very old.