'm an Electronic dude who graduated from college about 2004.
Recently, I've decided to go back programming micro-controllers and figured that everything about micro-controllers have been changed completely. When I was in studying, pic16f84 was not easily affordable but now, it's as cheap as $3. Anyway, after 6 long years I want to start programming micro-controller. I saw new "Parallax" thing and bunch of others but, I need you guys' help about software and hardware recommendations because everything has changed and I don't know about which one is good which one not right now.

My question would be;

What software provide me easy and professional programming which I'll also use it to product my own designs to sell them in future plans?

I would recommend either the 8051 microcontroller <T89C51AC2> using assembly or c programming OR

Arduino atmega 328 / 1280 are very easy too the compiler can be found of their website with several examples using C