Here are some of the other tools that I use now to program and use my PIC16F877A chips that I got as samples from microchip.

This one above is from
Olimex. It is just a development board and I ordered it from
sparkfun. This is exactly how it came. This allows board allows me to run my code.

This is the programmer that I got from
mdfly, which is an eBay store. This allows me to load my hex codes, which were compiled from assembly code using MPLAB, into my pic chips.