You need to use TWO equal sign in "condition" statements. C-like language differentiate = (assigning operator) and == (equality operator) a lot.
Now, I think switching VB to C++ is not easy either, but that again depends on how deep you get into in VB. For example, I'd been coding in VB for six years before I chose to fully switch to C++, and that was rather a pain at first - I was too accustomed to VB's language structure.