Which Microcontroller you suggest me for my needs?

[elissaios]

Hallo to all,
i am a student in university in greece(Computer engineering) and now its time to start learning microcontrollers.

The characherestics which i want to have the microcontroller that i will use is:

1)be popular
(That means that there are a lot of information on internet about the mcu,tutorials,examples,books with its architecture)

2)Free development tools and simulator
(i dont know if simulator is so important i think it is when you program in assembly whats your opinion?)

3)I want to start from low level.
I want to write some simple assembly programs because i like to know what happens in hardware and then move to abstract c.(so ii need a free assembler to do that and the aassembly to be not so complex)
Also i would like to understand its architecture so i wouldn t like very complex architecture.

From what i have read on internet i think that a 8 bit MCU AVR or PIC would be good.But which model and which is better for my need which i wrote above??

The experience that i have right now is:logical disign,basic electronics,architecture,c programming and little assemply(this experiences are not about microcontrollers but in general)

I would appreciate any help very much.

[adafruit_support_mike]

It sounds like the Arduino would be a good place for you to start. It's popular, it's simple, the programming environment makes it easy to start, but it gives you the power to do more complicated stuff as you learn how the microprocessor works. There's no simulator, but it's very easy to load programs onto the device and run them directly.

[westfw]

There's no simulator [for Arduino]

The Arduino has an ATmega328P AVR and an ISP connector on it. You can install the (free) Atmel Studio and program it using Atmel or Gnu assembler, and use the Atmel simulator for the chip. Just because it's an Arduino doesn't mean you MUST use the "high level" Arduino IDE and libraries...

Put another way: if you do NOT want to learn the details of microcomputers and electronics, then you have a good reason to get an Arduino.
If you DO want to learn the details, that's not a good reason NOT to buy an Arduino.