Getting started with arcobjects, without aiming to be developer?

What is the best route or place to get started with arcobjects if one is not a developer and not aiming to become one?

I've been using gis professionally for a long time, almost two decades, arcinfo/arcgis for most of that; I'm pretty good. I'm learning software development, and even have a modestly successful small python application used in a public project; I'm not good! I don't want to become a full fledged software developer but I keep running into things I jus开发者_运维知识库t can't do without programming (example). In the arcgis world this puts me pretty squarely in the python camp, which is fine by me since I like python, however python does not have straightforward access to arcobjects.

Soooo, I need to get started, but where? Arcgis help says to get started with the ESRI Developer Network but $1500/yr is definitely not in my budget, and sounds like using a sledge hammer to swat mosquito. And which language .NET, Visual Basic, or Visual C++?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Assuming you have desktop, I'd just install the SDK from the desktop installation DVD's and download the free VS2010 60 day eval (which can be extended).

VS Express is supported, but I've never used it.

For language, I'd stay away from C++. There's more sample code available for C# than VB.NET. Except for the yield keyword, VB.NET and C# are equal.