The purpose of these boards is to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the ability to program an IC to carry out a specific function .. ie flash LED's in a sequence or drive a stepper by sequenced pulses in the right order .. .. .. once achieved, the purpose of the boards is over.. isn't it ? They are a means to an end and once that end is achieved they have no means at all !
I can't see the point in making provision for long term repeat program changes which simply are not going to happen .. .. .. .
For most of the boards that's true, they are a 'one off' hardware solution - but the processor boards are obviously programmed over and over again.
To further explain why I didn't include ICSP on the boards, there were a number of reasons for that:
1) I wanted the boards to be as simple and basic as possible, so they were easy for people to make.
2) At the time most hobbiest programmers were home made, and didn't really provide ICSP.
3) The official MicroChip programmers were really very expensive back then, so not an option for most people.
This has obviously changed now, with the cheap PICKit2/3 programmers 'killing' off the third party hobbiest programmers.
'Back in the day' my technique was to fit my target PIC's in turned pin sockets, and in turn plug that in to a conventional socket on the target board, or in a ZIF socket on my programmer. I'm a bit bemused why Musicmanager has soldered the PIC's in his turned pin sockets?, the idea is that if you break a pin off the turned pin soicket you unplug the PIC and fit it in a new socket
Incidentally, over a number of decades, and thousands of programming cycles, I've
NEVER broken a pin off on of the turned pin sockets (or damaged a PIC in any way - burning a fingerprint in the top of one, doesn't count
).