I understand why those who are already familiar with PIC assembler might want to continue using it, especially if they are not familiar with C. I can also understand that you may be used to trying to squeeze every ounce of performance, or space in RAM/ROM out of a PIC if you've been using the 16 series.
The 18 series are *fast*... much faster than the 16F84 or 628a's most of the current crop of PIC affectionados have been using. The flash ROM has also expanded significantly giving you more room to move. The prices seem so reasonable that it's hard to imagine wanting to continue to use the 16 series except in the most price-sensitive applications.
For me, as an engineer wanting to design his first PIC-based product, using the 18 series and C meant that my productivity was *very* quickly to the point where I was writing useful code, without needing to learn PIC assembler which is quite frankly baroque.
C is C is C... the wrinkles involved in 8-bit vs 16 or 32-bit *are* part of C, so moving from a 6809 to a 68000 to a PIC18, PIC24 etc. is straightforward. In fact moving to the new PIC32 series is *much* easier if you know C... the assembler is so totally different that most PIC assembler fans are going to find the learning curve very steep and therefore simply decide to ignore them.
I have found learning the PIC architecture and I/O capabilities to be a great deal of fun
Using C I've got a lot further in my design in the time I've spent than I would have had I learned the assembler (and I'm a *very* good assembler programmer.)
So... *please* give some thought to learning C. You're a computer scientist, programmer or engineer, and learning *new* languages, concepts, etc. is part of your vocation or hobby as the case may be.
</rant off>
P.
PS: I re-wrote all of the library routines I used in my prototype... they are fine for a first stab as and as a basis for learning, but near useless for serious applications.