what program do you use with the PicKit2 to program chips ?

i have a buddy who does this stuff in C and uses MPLAB programming environment to program the chips but it makes you compile every time to program the chip, it seems very unwieldy
I use the GUI based stand-alone, PICkit2V2.exe. It has the handy feature that monitors the .HEX file and if it's modified, will automatically program the PIC. Only downside is that some compilers delete the .HEX file before they try to compile, and of course if compilation fails they do not create a new one. I don't know if PICBasic does this but I know that Proton has a mechanism to avoid this situation.

If you want to use this program manually, it is not necessary to recompile, just select the .HEX and hit GO.

George