Out of the box code is quite often a God send gift, especially when handling a new micro. But sometimes ......
I started mucking around with a dsPic4011 few months ago, using MPLAB and C30. I was quite happy since I was able to run an "hello world" application in a very short time. Not only did the MPLAB and C30 installation go smoothly but coping and pasting code available on the C30 peripherals library, programming uart1 and timer1 was a piece of cake!