Well, I'm muttling (is that a word) along in VC++ right now. It is hard to say how long it took me to learn C++, but I had a semester of it at University. The syntax is not really a problem. It is somewhat strict, but the rules are simple. I had another semester learning data structures and playing around unions, structs, and classes (and I got some great techniques from the RA who ran the class). It seems though that I don't get a chance to use any of the really complex data structures I learned. Instead, everything gets dumped into a database. That is fine with me. Anyway... there were two other classes that were important, the Big O junk, and the processor technologies. There you appreciate memory management, blocking, and scope a little better.

Anyway... learning C++ is not a problem. Learning programming, in any language, takes some experience. And it is experience I don't feel one gets from VB (and possibly not from VC++, the jury is still out).