I started working with PC apps about 5 years ago. I bought Visual Studio 2015 Professional and 5 books on the subject. Although VS 2019 is out, the books probably update with the versioning. One I recommend to get you functional (at a cheap price) is:

Visual Basic in easy steps
www.ineasysteps.com
My 4th (2015) Edition has ISBN: 978-1-84078-701-6
I bought it on Amazon. It's only 192 pages and covers only the essentials. It was the cheapest and thinest of the 5 books I bought, yet covers topics like data bases that the thicker more expensive books gloss over.

As for connecting the PC to a PIC via USB, I have been using HIDmaker; although I have also been able to get Microchip's MLA (in C for MPLABX) templates to work as well.