All the information you could ever want about the PIC is available through microchip
When it comes to programming microchip offers there MPLAB IDE at no charge. This is a nice ide that allows for syntax checking and compiling of programs for the PIC. The only problem (if you consider this a problem) is that you can only write code in assembly using this setup. For coding in C they require you purchase the compiler, or you can search for freeware compilers. To program the chip itself there are several different programmers available. microchip has a few to choose from (~$200+) or you can find other companies that offer PIC programmers (I found a pretty nice one for ~$100). Most of the PIC controllers allow for in circuit serial programming which lets you to program the chip without removing it from the circuit everytime you want to change the code. The additional circuitry for this is minimal and the documentation is very good in the PIC manuals.
Hope this helps, Michael