[sdiy] Microcontrollers, development environments and hardware programmer recommendations.

[Ben Riggs]

It’s been at least a 10 year hiatus in which i’ve given away/lost my hardware/software capability to program micro controllers, of which i’m sure are redundant anyways. but now i’ve got some project ideas that i would like to implement and i’m not sure how to go about getting the capability back. In the past i used PIC12 PIC16 & PIC18 micro controllers, so it would be handy to stick with the PIC platform because thats where i’m experienced, but i’m open to other platform recommendations if more suitable.

I started to look but became quickly overwhelmed.

what I’m looking for as far as recommendations go is based on:
1. I travel a lot (8 months of the year living out of a suitcase/ working out of a pelican toolbox) and travel with a current model MacBook (with the single USB-C port). I noticed that MPLAB IDE X runs on mac which is good. what other development environments do?
2. a hardware programmer, portability is key. USB and port powered preferable.
3. are PICs old tech now? is it better to move on and learn something new? what are the options?

any input and recommendations are appreciated.

Cheers,
Ben.