Hola dudes, que pasa?

Hey im reading this book "easy pic'n" it says that for the begginer its
better to use the TRIS instruction to configure outputs VS inputs, this
other guy said to me to forget about TRIS, he told me to use bank swtching,
that TRIS only complicates things, what about you guys, what do you
say?????

also, what programmer do you guys recommend???, im tempted to buy the
picstart plus, but how about the parallax one?, what assembler is better?
parallax or microchip?.....the one that i have now its the 16B wich is
really old.  ok thanks guys!!
later.