I am planning to create a panel with a number of switches to control a software plane coded in Processing. I have seen several tutorials on how to establish the communication between the board (arduino) and the software plane (in my case created in Processing).

Generally, people use firmata or program serial communication (parcels). 

I am not really familiar with any. My question is this: should I start digging in the direction of Firmata or serial parceling type of communication?  Which is better?

An update:

I have found that you can send messages from Processing to Arduino, but can you send info back to establish a two way communication?

Thank you,

Alex.