Is there any reason to use PIC instead of ARM at this point? You can get similarly priced dev boards for Cortex M0 microcontrollers.
There's a much higher bar for getting everything working on an ARM controller (ie: did you turn on the peripheral clock before trying to drive that pin?). But I agree, once you're initiated you should prototype everything on a 32-bit micro and then port to smaller or more cost effective chips once all the functionality is established.