C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices 1st Edition by Herb Sutter, and Andrei Alexandrescu

This edition written by real IT experts is a guide to understanding all the codes that a programmer should know. Moreover, the book emphasizes on high standard coding and how efficient it is to use for professionals. In more detail, it covers designing as well as coding styles, functions, operations, designing classes, and inheriting. So, the CPP exam candidate will find answers to different programming questions in standardizations, scalability, and handling policies in programming. It also covers areas such as static as well as dynamic polymorphism and when a programmer should provide the no-fail swap. All this will help a specialist working with the programming language C++ to move one step higher in this area and brilliantly demonstrate their skills on the final CPP test.

Reference: http://cppinstitute.org/cpp-c-certified-professional-programmer

The Exam Overview

The main requirement is that a candidate is expected to have the CPA C++ Certified Associate Programmer certificate. It shows that the candidate already has fundamental programming skills before passing the CPP test.

The current version of the CPP test is CPP-22-02 which includes 40 questions in single-choice and multiple-choice formats. To register, you must pay an exam fee of $295. After that, on the scheduled day, candidates will have 65 minutes to answer all the questions and to score at least 70% to pass the exam on the first try.

However, the first thing every candidate should do is to familiarize themselves with the full list of exam questions on the official website. Thus, some of the topics covered are templates, modification of STL algorithms, sorting of STL operations, and merge operations under STL. It also covers STL utilities as well as the functional library, STL Sequential as well as Associative containers, sorting operations for STL, and others.

Study Courses for the CPP Exam

One of the study courses that a candidate can use to prepare for the C++ CPP exam is the self-enroll CPP course from the C++ Institute. It is a free, online-based resource that assists students to gain knowledge about advanced concepts and content areas such as templates alongside the STL (Standard Template Library). The main objective is help candidates understand template mechanisms in C++. The training also covers the use of property template methods and categories, using third-party templates, combined with the creation of template functions and classes. It also touches the candidate’s understanding of the C++ STL, inclusive of the IO components, and teaches how to handle programming issues using the STL predefined categories as well as methods. As a result, you will have 10 weeks to complete all 9 modules of the training program and test your skills with a practical exam that includes 40-50 questions. After that, you will get access to the final test, which is a representation of the actual CPP exam. It has 50 questions and a candidate’s performance here helps in checking how ready one is for the final exam.

A learner can also opt for the paid instructor-led course, the CPP: Advanced Programming in C++. During this training, there will be the utilization of resources and materials that the C++ Institute has approved. So, this course is ideal for the CPP test-takers as it allows them to work with different templates as well as the STL. It is presented in form of 9 educative modules, alongside practical labs, and final evaluation tests. And the course also orients a candidate into a learning community where they can interact with tutors and other learners, ask questions here, and debate on the various concepts covered in the course.

However, you should consider the prerequisites for participation in this program. Among these is a good knowledge and skills in the C++ programming language including operator overloading and inheritance. In addition, each candidate must have already taken a C++ language training course at the associate level and obtain the related CPA – C++ Certified Associate Programmer certification.

Conclusion

As already mentioned above, the CPP – C+ Certified Professional Programmer is associated with the corresponding certification. It comes to evaluate how well the candidates are conversant with the modern programming requirements, and how they can utilize programming templates to create more efficient and reliable apps.

So, you'll have to work hard to get a passing score on the official CPP-22-02 exam and prove that you're worthy of the Certified Professional Programmer title in C++. But you can always turn to courses provided by the C++ Institute, or you can cover all the topics with books from third-party sites like Amazon. All you have to do is register for the CPP test and opt for the learning tools that suit you personally. Go for it!