C++ it's a hugely complicated language in itself, it simply tends to build quite complicated applications and can become a little bloated.

I would suggest learning C-style programming languages in order to first get to grips with the syntax of C, such as Java, PHP or even Actionscript (Flash). Those languages and many others use the C-style programming. VB does not! So if you're really desperate to learn C++, I suggest you ditch VB.