PIC programmers? More generic programmer? Port?

I was a field application engineer for Microchip from 2008-2011, making POCs for big name customers in the bay area using 8, 16 and 32-bit PICs. You will likely find that Microchip support is awful, even if their products are pretty neat. There was an Arduino port for PICs called "ChipKit" but I don't know if that's still being developed. The PicKit 3 is decent, if pretty slow. The ICD3 and later versions are good. MPLAB X is excellent IMO. I should still hold a design partner discount so if you want to get some tools, contact me offline and I'll see if I can save you some money. That all said, I'm a huge fan of the STM32 ARM devices and the community is nearly as good as Nordic, and what Atmel used to be before it was acquired by Microchip. -- Anders Nelson