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I am an undergraduate student and I recently was hired for a co-op for this summer and next fall. From what I understand I will be writing a lot of C++ which I am comfortable with but I don't have a huge amount of experience actually writing C++ in particular.

I wanted to take the time to really dive into C++ and become much more proficient with it. Does anyone have any particular resources that I could use to get some more experience before I start my job?

Rookie
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tgai
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  • possible duplicate of [Need a C++ refresher](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5099946/need-a-c-refresher) – Cody Gray - on strike Feb 24 '11 at 22:31
  • [Get some advice from books](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list), try to apply it on a small scale. – Georg Fritzsche Feb 24 '11 at 22:38
  • Possibly move this to programmers? – Kajetan Abt Feb 26 '11 at 19:14
  • Congratulations on the internship! I went to Iowa State University and enjoyed both my internships while I was a student. Do you know what you'll be working on? It might be easier to give you better answers if we knew you'd be working on network programming, distributed systems, algorithms, etc. – Sam Miller Feb 26 '11 at 21:21

4 Answers4

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TopCoder was featured on This Developers Life recently and the algorithm challenges are a great way to hone your skills in various languages including C++

Getting involved in Open Source projects is a regular suggestion.

Good books from many authors are listed conveniently in many places including Amazon.com

John Weldon
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  • I recently signed up for TopCoder and tried a problem. I think it might be a great tool for learning about the language. Reading about it can only get you so far, in my opinion. – tgai Feb 24 '11 at 22:38
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To really deeply understand the language and learn some best practices I would recommend to read Herb Sutter's books, in following order:

  1. C++ Coding Standards
  2. Exceptional C++
  3. More Exceptional C++
  4. Exceptional C++ Style

The first one is very useful if you don't have experience with industrial development in C++.

Peter Popov
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Read The C++ Programming Language by Stroustrup cover to cover, and then read it again and again. Then, as you work with C++ programs, keep referring back to that book to remind yourself of the details of various topics.

It is, by far, the best book on C++ available, and since the author invented C++, you will get a good sense of the intentions and rationales of the various language features.

Once you have mastered the contents of that book, the next step is to familiarise yourself with the C++ 03 and the upcoming 0x standards. Reading a language standard can be hard, but once you get used to the style, standards are invaluable resources.

It is very important to be familiar with the authoritative resources and not get lead astray with possibly incorrect or out-dated information out on the web. I've seen programmers make really dumb mistakes because they just searched on Google to find out how some language feature works.

smithco
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You need to practice and read manuals (tutorials) for c++.

Else you can try to look at internet website who are not protected and look at the source code.

Everybody work hard for what they learn and apply.

Good luck!

ThorDozer
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