On a sunny day (Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:18:27 -0800) it happened Rich Grise wrote in :
Real man write asm. For something as simple as that .. just a few lines asm. Hey it is only 35 or so instructions... Read datasheets, your first take with any micro is learning about the hardware in it, interrupt system, memory organisation, initialisation requirements... But for the second project you can probably (if you worked in a clean way) re-use much of the code. PICs are programed via a 3 wire system. noppp programmer connects to some of the par port pins. I wrote Linux soft for that circuit to program several PIC types. Others did the same. Code for noppp available upon request. And if anybody complains about timing, IIRC I used the PC timer, so it should work on any PC with a parport, 3$ part counts.
But you need to understand the basics of microprocessors, and programming. That may take a while, and probably a lifetime to keep up. And there are a thousand if not more solutions to the same problem possible. All software, interrupts, hardware timers in the micro, it all up to you. Plenty of example code on the Microchip site. They also have a free C compiler and some cheap PIC programmer. But for some flashing light? C? BASIC? Where is the world going? hehe