C++ learning tracks

What "graded" means here, before any C++ is taught. A program that compiles, passes every test and still fails — so the rule is learned once rather than resented later.

The layer everything else sits on, and the one where C's defaults are still wrong forty years later. Fixed-width integers, narrowing, signedness, and what auto actually deduces.

The one idea. Smart pointers, locks, exception safety and the rule of zero are all this wearing a different hat, which is why it comes before any of them.

Where C++ stops resembling other languages. Before containers on purpose: a learner who has not felt the cost of a copy reads performance-* as nagging rather than as arithmetic.

Who owns this, and who is merely looking at it — answered in the signature with a type rather than in a comment nobody reads.

The standard library read as a set of cost promises rather than a menu of names. Growth, borrowing, one lookup instead of two, and the loop that stops having bugs once it has a name.

The public surface is the API, and what it permits is what callers will do. const as a promise the compiler enforces, and the constructor that converts behind your back.

Failure as part of the type. The three honest answers to "this can go wrong" — return it, throw it, or refuse to continue — and how to tell which one you are looking at.