32b MCU famiy with cheap programmers, cheap HW debug, and open tools

[andersm]

However I see everyone mention m3/m4 which are full cpu, which need O/S from what I understand.

Cortex-M are "m"icrocontrollers. Cortex-A are "a"pplication processors, which you'll probably want to use an OS with.

[mikeselectricstuff]

However I see everyone mention m3/m4 which are full cpu, which need O/S from what I understand.

No CPU needs an OS.
m3 core parts cover a fairly wide range of capabilities - NXP do some fairly low-end m3 parts (LPC13xx)

[benjamin]

I think the cheapest and easiest way of starting 32 bit programming is buying a STM32 disco board and download emblocks (+/- 40Mb download). Emblocks can import coIDE projects (also mplab8 and X) so you can also start using all the coIDE examples. Installing emblocks will give you a complete development environment with the GCC toolchain pre-installed and an asynchronous GDB server for STlink. It is the most simple setup because everything is in the distribution.

The advantage of this asynchronous GDB server is that you can watch variable values while the target is running. Just hover with the mouse over a variable in the code editor.

A very nice board, and also very cheap, is the F429-Disco boards with touch LCD. There are plenty examples as an oscilloscope, pacman etc.

[dannyf]

emblocks (+/- 40Mb download)

emBlocks is my exclusive ide for anything pic24. I have been a user since its beta days and could not have been happier.

It is what MPLAB X could have been and should have been. emBlocks was developed by one guy over a short period of time and it has been stable for a long time, the exact opposite of MPLAB X.