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1) You'll be able to program in 'C' and have confidence that the compiler is generating valid code. This is a massive time saver over using assembler on a pic or trying to get a pic compiler to generate non-junk.

I think you're been unnecessarily harsh on PIC C compilers. I've used several in the past and never had any problems with the generated code. Sometimes the compiler manufacturers extensions was a little odd in how they worked but it was still workable.