VB.NET is not like anything else, it's not even like VB all that much.
As a founder member of the VB User Group I have to say that I hated VB.NET the first time I saw it. Then hated it a bit more, and then settled down to a quiet distant loathing, hoping that somehow it would just go away.
I'm not alone, VB.NET cost Microsoft a big % of the developer tools market in general, and in the case of the quant market, it simply never got going at all.
I know of more quants using SmallTalk than VB.NET, (don't feel embarrassed if you've never heard of it, the point is that it's old, obscure and painfully hard to maintain, so therefore critical to JP Morgan).
VB.NET is vaguely like C#, since it was written by the people kicked out of the teams writing tools for grownups, so it's a Cargo Cult impression of C#. In the same way that cargo cults tried making radios out of wood and sea shells.
It is almost uniquely useless as a skill to the aspiring quant.
In order, the quant programming tools are:
C++
VBA (
not VB.NET)
Matlab
C#
Perl
SQL
Mathematica
Java
Fortran
Smalltalk
Slang
Objective C
VB.NET
This is
not the order of their use in getting a job.
Few quants are hired for VBA skills, and C# is the second most demanded language.
If
C++ seems a bit hard, then start with C#, the demand is less but it's on rational difficulty/value curve. Every minute spent learning VB.NET is wastged.