I have never worked with a PIC but I can certainly express my appreciation for the 8051. I like it`s general processor achitecture and interrupt capabilities because my projects tend to revolve around multitasking using a long, ladder-logic like loop with interrupts for the time critical stuff. There is always a way to ultimately control what the cpu is doing. I only do this on a self-taught hobby basis using assembler but as long as the processing speed is sufficient for the task, I cannot see what it couldn`t do.