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It’s true.

They struggled with C8 or something, then they purchased HiTech C and renamed it XC8 (and 16). Then I think expanded it to the DSP33s and PIC32 which for some reason are drastically different. Then at some point they forced everything into MPLABX (netbeans) and Harmony code generation… it’s never been good.

I hate that I’ve never found anything I completely love.

They have niches though.

When I was coding for 16C71 all the C compilers were buggy. It's one reason never call them the good old days. We are so luck to have the tools we have today!

May I ask, what language you were using back then?

No OP, but I used C and asm. Hi-Tech c compiler. I had no issues with it. Very simple and straightforward to code the PIC chips. I forget how much I paid for it.

Good old C. I am moderately sure it was the MPLAB software, I remember we had several of their ICD JTAG units (the round ones). But it might have been Hitech.