A microcontroller can be considered a natural evolution of the microprocessor but while any cpu needs of a large external circuitry to operate, microcontrollers have been created including, in the same package, almost all components needed to its funcionality.
Microcontrollers - Intro
Microcontroller programmers
This is not the right place to suggest one or another pic programmer, there are real universe of microcontroller programmers on the market at any price.
All depends on the frequency of use. If the programmer is rarely used even a simple, serial programmer can be realized, but if this instruments is used often very probably it is better to focus on a product more evolved.
Programming languages for picmicro
This is a real universe. There is a real pletora of programming languages dedicated to the programming of the microcontrollers. In any case we can divide all this universe into two different galaxies: the open source galaxy (freeware) and the commercial galaxy (to be payd). To these galaxies belong all popular languages, normally created for personal computers but adapted and modified to be used with microcontrollers.
