I too have been away from PIC tinkering for quite some time.  Been playing
with the Pi boards as well.  Unless one needs the weight of a multitasking
OS and heavy duty network support, I'm a fan of ARM Cortex chips.  For me,
they seem to be a good middle ground between small microcontrollers and
Linux or Android based boards.

I have to admit that I got sucked into the Arduino world because of the C
compiler.  Now that the ide supports larger, faster ARM boards, I'm really
finding it hard to justify fighting with PIC assembler.  Especially with
the cheap ESP8266 boards available.  Up to 160MHz 32 bit and usable WiFi
make for a neat tinkertoy.  That is, after you blow away the preloaded
firmware and install an Arduino compatible boot loader.

That all said, I'm fairly impressed with the speed and peripherals of the
18F45K22 that I had to flash for my Renard SSR based Christmas light
controller.  I've really been out of touch with the advancement of the 8
bit PICs.
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