one of the big dissadvantages of VB is that it's very hard to manipulate string pointers, which means C++ can handle strings very quickly and VB can't.
I'm not sure I aggree Sam, C++ usually impliments one type of String class or another (AnsiString in BCB for example)
with the idea of simplifying C strings (Char arrays) but they come at the cost of performance. If you want fast strings like C then use byte arrays. Although you won't quite match perfomance you can pass the first array position as a pointer.

Even in C it's well known that (non floating point) integer math will be quicker than char arrays.

C lets you go lower level when necessary though