First, use a resonable subject.  I've added one.

a b wrote:
> I am an experienced programmer in C and Basic on PCs and am looking to
> program [PICs]

Is this personal or professional?  Do you have specific projects that you
want to get done and a microcontroller is just an annoying means to the end,
or do you really want to learn how they work for its own sake?

Unless these are simply a means to a specific end and you don't plan on
using them after that, you should start out in assembler.  The chips you
listed are all in the "midrange" 14 bit core family.  These are smaller than
many 18 and 30 family PICs and it's more important to be aware of what's
happening underneath.

> 16F84, 16F628, 16F876 and 16F877 chips.

If this is for one-off or small volume use, don't bother with the smaller
versions of a particular footprint.  Don't bother with the 16F84 in any
case.  Time has passed it by quite a while ago.  For small volumes using the
16F 18 pin footprint stick to the 16F88 or 16F648A depending on whether you
want A/D or comparator.  For the 28 and 40 pin footprint in the 16F family,
use the 16F876A and 16F877A, respectively.

> I am new to micros and need to select a compiler that will carry me not
> just through the beginner stage but serve me into the future.

Then you definitely don't want a compiler at this stage.  You've got two
major humps to get over, programming on small resource-limited systems, and
the fact that you have to get intimate with the hardware.  There is no OS
and nicely abstracted I/O with a common procedural interface.  You don't
just slap a C program on one of these and go.  You actually have to *know*
something about the machine your program is going to run on.  A compiler is
going to try and hide some of that from you, making the task of truly
understanding it harder.  And until you truly understand what goes on at the
low level, you won't write good code and will constantly be banging your
head against the wall when things don't work as expected, regardless of what
language you write in.

If learning the low level details doesn't appeal to you, find something else
to do or get a Basic Stamp or something.  These do provide the abstractions,
but note that they cost an order of magnitude more than a bare PIC and run
probably more than an order of magnitude slower.

> I am looking specfically at MBasic, mEL Picbasic Pro, Hitech C, and CCS
> C.

Start out with MPASM, which is part of the free MPLAB software from
Microchip.


******************************************************************
Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, (978) 742-9014.  #1 PIC
consultant in 2004 program year.  http://www.embedinc.com/products
-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist