I'm soldering/programming this device and things I've learned so far about PIC microcontrollers:

• Those low-end chips can be programmed in many variants of assembler dialect. There is at least MPASM, PIC-AS, GPASM. I've chosen PIC-AS because it's available in MPLAB IDE (environment by Microchip for writing software for PIC microcontrollers) and seems to be more modern. I don't get why they created a new version of assembler dialect, what was wrong with the older MPASM?
• MPLAB IDE has dropped support for AFAIK the most popular hobbyist level programmer - PICKit3. There is some added/kept support for it in MPLAB IPE tool, but for me PICKit3 doesn't enumerate in available devices there.
• There is an open source alternative for flashing those chips (PICkit tool) and it works fine.
• Microchip provides their IDE based on NetBeans (NetBeans=Java=slow), but they also created a bunch of plugins for VS Code. The project needs to be once created in MPLAB IDE and then it can be imported and built in VS Code. Nice.
• The mentioned PICkit tool has a command line version, so I think it's possible to script it from VS Code to flash the chip automatically.
• VS Code AFAIK doesn't have a nice plugin to color PIC-AS dialect of assembler for those chips, the best what I've found is this plugin.