John Ferrell said:

> "Best" can only be answered by the individual user.

Which is *ABSOLUTELY* true

he also said:
> A good set of tools will let you focus on your projects. A poor
> set of tools will have you tinkering with the tool set rather
> than your projects.

This is doubly true when you are dealing with a very small processor,
particularly one not all that well architected to support compiled
languages.

If you intend to use the PIC16 or smaller, I would strongly suggest you
consider getting down to the bare metal and use Microchip's MPLAB and
their assembler.  There are only 35 instructions so anyone can learn it. 
I know assembler may sound scary, but the PIC is pretty darned simple.

If your projects are going to be very simple, you might try one of the
Basic environments.  The PICaxe is very popular, but it does require that
you buy PICs from them, which of course are more expensive.  If you are
only going to do a small number of projects, though, that might not be a
big deal.  Most of the 8 bit PICs are under $3 from Microchip, the PICaxe
chips (PICs with code already in them) are around twice that, so it isn't
like there is some huge cost. There are several other similar approaches,
none has really become a clear leader.

If you are going to use the more powerful 16 bit PICs, then Microchip's
C30 compiler is probably the path of least resistance.  The larger PICs
are only barely more expensive, but a lot more capable.  They have a much
more expansive instruction set, which makes assembler a lot more difficult
to learn, but makes compiled programs run a lot better.  The C30 compiler
is a real C compiler, with all the features you would expect.  The
"Student" edition, which basically leaves out some optimizations that
rarely matter, is free.  Because of that it is basically the standard for
the 16 bit PICs (PIC24, dsPIC30 and dsPIC33).  The 16 bit parts can have
huge memory and are very fast, which means you can be quite sloppy and
still get away with it.  The only real downside, if you can call it that,
is that some of the peripherals can walk and chew gum while washing the
dishes.  This can make it a little tough to get your head around them. 
But the basic stuff is the same.

Most of the PIC16 C compilers have issues.  You can learn to work around
them (I frequently use the "Small Device C Compiler" for example), but
they really take more investment in learning than programming in
assembler.  Still, they are probably more widely used than the Basic
compilers (which means there are more people around to help).

The PIC18's are sort of in the middle.  Microchip has a C compiler for
them, which means there are fewer competitive compilers. But they are
easier to program in assembler than even the PIC16, so there is less of a
bias toward compiled solutions over assembler.

Like John said; it depends!

--McD


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