Start with the K70 Tower system to get familiar with the development tools. I am only in my third week of the K70 and Codewarrior. It is indeed complex and a painful learning curve. So far anyway. But I always get over those curves.
With the Tower system you will get a P&E downloader/debugger system.
You can code in C/C++ or assembly, depending on which Codewarrior tool you buy.