[Loubear]

Just to put my 2 cents in, all you really need is mplab and possibly labview for testing. Labvew is included with the kit of parts, and since you already know Java, just imagine C as Java w/o access levels, classes, and all that object oriented stuff... and has pointers. Java was made so that C/C++ programmers could pick up on it easily, so it works both ways.