based on my college experience, and my wife who just started a few years ago, dont spend all your energy on one professor saying crap they dont mean.... many of them do that cause they like to live in this bubble where they are always correct, even when they contradict themselves.
As far as PIC's go, well out here in the real world PIC's tend to rule for off the shelf programmable micro's, so get used to them. For example recently one of our venders went though the choices for a micro, squat ram, tiny package with can bus capability (the cheap ones did not have the transceiver internal, but thats beside the point)
the ATtiny was somewhere in the upper 30's to lower 40 cent per unit, which of course was my vote cause one of the edumacated EE's (I have a CS degree) and I can rip out some AVR code really freaking fast on smaller projects. The PIC came in at like 18 cents a unit programmed from the factory with our firmware.
When your going to make a couple million units, do the math.
What I hate about PIC's on small projects or hobby level is the nickel and dime crap. This isnt bad when your doing it on a large scale, buy the crap you need, get it done, profit, but ... for a small scale example I found a reel of old PIC16F688's (SMT) that was obsolete as far as our parts lists go and no longer in inventory.
Hey, I thought to myself, I have a project where these would be perfect, Ill snag or 50 and put the 2550 left into engineering parts inventory for whatever use we can think of. I asked the bosses politely if I can snag one of the dozen old ICD2 programmers, which they didnt care, and dragged the mess home.
well, having the chips and a programmer I was ready to roll, no turns out I need a programmer to plug into the programmer cause the 16F688 doesnt have something or whatever crap, which is another slightly larger PIC to program the PIC from the ICD2
So now I have this rats nest, USB & 9V going to a hockey puck which has a 6 pin RJ11 phone jack going out to a board sitting on a breadboard that contains another PIC, that will program the 688 (and ONLY THAT CHIP) but only in though hole, with a hand made DIP to SMD ZIF adapter and the GD microchip software starts fussing about the ICD2! Like 2 nights later I can make a damn LED blink
UGh