I started in the 1960s as an impoverished student. Everything seemed very expensive. Including film and processing. Exposing a roll of Kodachrome 64, and finding out ten days later when I got it back from the processing lab, that I had completely messed up something or other, certainly taught me a lot - but at a price, financially as well as in frustration.
I'm in the "get a digital camera and play around until you understand it, then experiment with film" camp for sure.