ZERS said:
By the way, I did not really understand the difference (in terms of circuit) between a bootloader and a simpler programmer
Could you please explain in short terms ?
Again, that website probably explains it all!.
But basically a programmer runs software which writes to the target chip, the target chip doesn't run (and mustn't run) during this process.
A bootloader runs in the target chip, it receives a simple RS232 file from the computer, so the computer doesn't run any programming software, it's all in the target chip.
When you buy a PIC it's blank, so the only way to get code in it is to use a programmer, you can then load a bootloader into it, and use a serial port bootloader transfer after that.