As I understand it, you can have your PIC hardware connected to your development PC (using something like a PICkit3 or PICkit4) - which you use for programming, but can also use for debugging. What I would like to see is a video showing how to connect the development system to the hardware (via a PICkit3/4) and where real world actions (say pressing a switch) shows up in the IDE as breakpoints or as redirecting the program via the Interrupt routine etc. So many videos seem to use the software simulator rather than real world hardware.
The sort answer is that these MCUs do not really warrant the use of in-circuit debugging. The programs are not complex enough. If you can program the MCU the only difference is that you click debug and not program device in MPLAB X IDE. There is almost no difference between using the sim and in-circuit debugging. There is also no upfront cost to using the sim. In-circuit debugging is also ungodly slow and you are limited on the number of break points you can use. I cover simulating external inputs here with the simulator. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-O4IpwgWhqLY.html PICkit4 or MPLAB SNAP as the debugger. The PICkit3 is deprecated. I'll take a simulator over in-circuit debugging any day if it is available.
The 18F has more config bits. You can probably use the setting here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OQ6hZzkvXMw.html and just generate it as a ASM project.
Good Video... MicroCHOP screwed up BIG time with PIC-AS s. MPASM is far more practical and more powerful than PIC-AS s and their excuse of MPASM only been 32bit there was nothing stopping them recompiling MPASM to 64bit instead of creating the PIC-AS s GARBAGE. Hopefully they don't destroy the AVR assembler. MPLAB_X 5.35 is the Last version using MPASM.
You always got the option to download and install an older version of the XC8 compiler. For the AVR there is always the GCC-AVR compiler doubt maintenance on that project will just stop.
