I have a circuit simulator program called EveryCircuit on my ipad (it looks like it's available on Chrome) and it's very simple to use and develop intuitions about basic components.

You really don't need to use EagleCad to lay out your own PCBs for a very long time into the hobby. Perf board and jumper wires are sufficient for prototyping for a long time, most SMD/ball only chips/components have prototyping boards from sparkfun or adafruit or whatever.