Some good points above.

I follow a lot different interest and hobbies and have noticed in general, forum activity seems way down across the board. With well over ten years of solid internet access, most of the information and ideas are published. With google you can find most any info in minutes. So why ask questions on a forum and chance seeming stupid or lazy.

I don't think PBP is finished, but not going to advance at this point. It will be maintained as long as Microchip produces the 8 bit family and the ME founders don't retire. It would be a monumental task to catch up - pic24, dspic30, dspic33, and pic32 etc. Plus the new generation of techies want everything for free so it's not a good business plan. I use Mikroe complilers also and it seems they are stalled. Slow updates, unfixed bugs, they push hardware products now for the most part. Proton Basic came out with 16bit compiler a few years back, you don't hear much about that? Arduino/open source and chip makers with free dev tools are killing the old names. Once you learn C you can buy any 8 to 32bit platform for cheap, use the free compiler, free libraries, no programmer or power supply nessesary, just a usb cable. Hard to compete!