im posting this link because the VB program it shows you to make has been really helpful for me as a beginner to engineering,electronics and programming (but with background in science and math) to get the idea of serial and how useful it is even just a a dialogue between microcontroller.
Warning he does tend to get a bit distracted by presentation of textboxes etc but its a very good tutorial in that he explains each step he took without sparing many details.
