If you haven't seen TIs msp430 Development tool, it's pretty cool.
For $20 you can get thumb drive sized programmer and mirocrontroller breakout board.  They put the microcontroller on a separate board that is easy to remove, which means you can use the programmer to program other 2012 target boards, which you can get three of for $10.  Plus you can use IARs free C compiler to write code.

So far I have written code to drive a 7 segment display but more will follow.