The comprehensive, five-day course consists of three modules:

A preliminary module reviews topics, including inheritance, the ANSI C++ Standard Library, templates, I/O streams, and practical issues of C++ programming, such as reliability, testing, efficiency, and interfacing to C. This material is covered as needed depending on the background of the students.

The second module covers more advanced topics. Advanced issues of inheritance and polymorphism are covered, as are the principles of effective class design, including the orthodox canonical form, use of composition, templates, and interface inheritance. The course covers exception handling and runtime type information (RTTI). Multiple inheritance is covered, including the complications that are introduced by this powerful feature. Advanced applications of C++ concepts are studied, including smart pointers and reference counting.

The third module introduces the Standard Template Library (STL). The main components of data structures, algorithms, and iterators are covered. Illustrations are provided of a number of important containers, such as vectors, stacks, queues, lists, and sets.

Extensive programming examples and exercises are provided. A number of progressively developed case studies are used to illustrate object-oriented programming techniques and to give the student practical experience in putting together features of C++ learned in the course. A file is provided containing all the examples and laboratory exercises in the course.