I have fond memories of using it for PIC16 as a teenager, ~25 years ago. It was a huge step up from writing assembly. My parents bought me a Microchip PICSTART Plus, but refused to pay for a Hitech-C compiler license. :)

SDCC has been a nice resource for a variety of MCUs. I wish it had support for some of the 8-bit PIC chips like the PIC10 and PIC12... maybe one day!

SDCC has the best OSS 8051 compiler. It is buggy as hell, but it is free. Sometimes that is good enough.

Has worked well enough for me on 8051 and stm8

TIL about Dallas Semiconductor from this page.

Love Silicon Prairie lore.