first µC project

Much depends on the nature of the project, on your background, and on what supporting equipment and tools that you have access to.

Could you expand a little on what it is you're trying to do and what experience you have?

Yes

Yes, that's the big benefit of the Arduino platform: a very high first project success rate. It can be a real fight (but fun!) to get a new chip up and running. Absent something like the Arduino or the older Basic Stamp, though, it's easy for a new user who is faced with several hundred pages of registers, bits, and oh-by-the-ways to get discouraged.

cool, thanks :-)

Arduino is lite (I have some R1's, some R3's, a Leonardo, 4 Mini's, a home- made Arduino, the Ethernet shield, the LCD + keyboard shield, the RTC shiel d, some ATTiny's). Very fast and easy to start. Nice. Lots of (light) suppo rt. But I'll stick with hard-core Microchip. Where do you want to go?