PicKit2 came too late for me and so did the hundreds of dollars needed for the SDK to write code for the PIC chips. so the name MicroChip IAR, MPLAB all have a sour taste. AVR on the other hand spread like wild fire because of the SDKs being open source.
Love CHEP otherwise.
And I’m so old I used to typewrite letters to mfg asking for samples and associated databooks.