Yeah, I agree with Nigel. PIC is more advatage, and it's easier to write asm code. I'm writing muchie in 8951, but finally I choose PIC for my graduate project. As you will see that the advantages of PIC family is not only the simple PICs, but the whole family, there many type of specific chips that you only have to learn one time. For this such simple project, 16f84 is good enough.

Oh, I think PIC has fewer instructions because it's a RISC CPU, and each intruction need only one cycle. Other MC instructions may takes 2 or more cycles. With RISC CPU, each intructions operate a only one intruction. But to CISC CPU, one instruction may include 2 or more instructions. For example, if you want to save b'ff' to a register, in PIC, you have to move it to W register before move it to the register. But with CISC MC, you can write directly to move b'ff' to a register. But the fact that, the MOV instruction will do as move it to a shift register, than move b'ff' to your expected register. They are complex instructions. But PIC instructions is reduced.

Therefore, it's easier with PIC, and PIC can also do as much as any other chips could. Of course, I'm waiting for MICROCHIP to produce a fuzzy chip, but ....