I'd personally used EasyC for vex and must say that its definitely much easier for my role (to teach programming) to the kids! I cleared the basics in <= 1 day.. never could I have done the same with traditional teaching lines of C code and syntax. Not only that, they start coding very fast and must say that I am amazed at the simplicity of basic C building blocks
But besides that, not sure if the kids will end up learning proper C syntax or get interested in typing-based coding in future.
Personally prefer MPLAB and Eclipse, typing is faster for me. MPLAB is a terrible GUI IDE, but not complaining too much as Eclipse is quite well developed by the masses. MPLAB is like the basic so I'm not complaining of lack of frills. EasyC has been developed a lot to have templates in the form of boxes, and much integration to ensure that it will work with the processor it is bundled with. Going a level higher to other microcontrollers, one cannot avoid going towards mplab / raw C / ASM programming, unless another takes effort to do the neccessary template legwork to make it easy for the massses to program that particular controller.
I hope there will not be any quarrels/war due to easyc/mplab, its just like mac/PC or C++/java. Both have their advantages and cater to different purposes. Both are useful tools and different learning curves.. different interfaces, different methods of working with your algo... being well versed with both tools would be the best
