The STM8S-DISCOVERY for less than $10

http://www.st.com/internet/evalboard/product/247087.jsp
A full development tools for lass the 10 bucks. This is the incredible solution proposed by ST.

Key Features

• STM8S105C microcontroller
• Self powered by USB cable between PC and STM8S-Discovery
• Selectable power supply voltage: 5 V or 3.3 V for your application
• Embedded STLink for the STM8S-USB interface for programming and debugging
• SWIM debug support
• Touch sensing interface
• Wrapping area for user’s own application

 The software suite is totally free/ It includes the debugger, the programmer and the C compilers proposed by Raisonance (http://www.raisonance.com/) or Cosmic (http://www.cosmicsoftware.com/fr/index.php).  These free Options are covering the program sizes from 0 to 32KBytes.
  For those used to work with IAR. (http://www.iar.com/website1/1.0.1.0/675/1/) the functions of the embedded workbench will satisfy the users of IAR as STM8S and ARM (STM32) are now supported.

http://www.st.com/internet/evalboard/product/247087.jsp
More resources can be found at this page, databrief, application notes, user manuals) to help developers to rune their trials in no time.