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Core C++ for Interviews · Pointers vs References: The #1 Most Asked C++ Fundamental

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Module 1

C++ Fundamentals Every Interviewer Tests

What Actually Happens When You Compile C++ — And Why Interviewers Ask This Stack vs Heap: Answer This Wrong and You Fail the Interview Pointers vs References: The #1 Most Asked C++ Fundamental const Correctness: The Trap That Fails 80% of Candidates The 4 Meanings of static — Interviewers Love This Question volatile vs atomic — Don't Confuse These in an Interview extern and Linkage — What Senior Engineers Know That Juniors Don't sizeof Traps — Classic Interview Trick Questions Decoded The ODR Rule — Why It Comes Up in Every System Design Round Header Files and Translation Units — What Interviewers Expect You to Know

Module 2

Memory & Ownership — The Most Tested C++ Topic

RAII: If You Can't Explain This, You Won't Pass a C++ Interview How Stack Unwinding Works — And Why It Matters in Real Code new/delete vs malloc/free — Interviewers Will Ask the Difference unique_ptr vs shared_ptr vs weak_ptr — Master All Three make_shared vs shared_ptr(new T) — The Answer That Impresses Interviewers Why shared_ptr Is NOT Thread-Safe — The Trap That Trips Everyone Dangling Pointers — Spot and Fix Them Live in an Interview Memory Leaks — How to Find, Explain and Prevent Them on a Whiteboard Rule of 3, Rule of 5, Rule of 0 — Which One Applies and When Copy Elision and RVO — Why Your Copy Constructor Isn't Always Called Object Alignment and Padding — Why Your Struct Is Bigger Than You Think placement new — When Interviewers Ask About Custom Memory Control

Module 3

Move Semantics — Where Most Candidates Fake It

lvalues, rvalues, xvalues — Explain This Clearly and Stand Out Write a Move Constructor from Scratch — The Most Common Live Coding Ask std::move Is Just a Cast — Here's What Interviewers Want You to Say std::forward and Perfect Forwarding — Stop Guessing, Understand It When Does the Compiler Auto-Generate Move Operations — Interview Answer Moved-From State — What's Left and Why Interviewers Care noexcept on Move — Why std::vector Requires It and You Should Too

Module 4

OOP in C++ — Asked at Every Single Company

Constructors Deep Dive — Default, Delegating, explicit and When Each Matters Virtual Destructors — Get This Wrong and Leak Memory in the Interview Inheritance — Public vs Protected vs Private, Explained for Interviews How vtables Work Internally — The Answer That Makes Interviewers Nod Pure Virtual Functions and Abstract Classes — Write One in an Interview override and final — Why Not Using Them Is a Red Flag Object Slicing — The Gotcha That Catches Even Experienced Candidates Multiple Inheritance and the Diamond Problem — How to Solve It Cleanly All 4 C++ Casts — When to Use Each One in an Interview Answer Operator Overloading — Rules, Traps, and What Interviewers Actually Test mutable Keyword — The One That Always Comes Up in const Discussions

Module 5

Templates — Where Good C++ Engineers Separate Themselves

Function and Class Templates — The Basics Every Interviewer Expects How Template Type Deduction Works — Explain It Without Stumbling Template Specialization — Full vs Partial, With Real Interview Examples constexpr — Compile-Time Computation Asked in Performance Interviews Variadic Templates — What They Are and How to Use Them Confidently SFINAE — What It Is, Why It Exists, How to Explain It Simply std::enable_if — Conditional Templates Without Confusion Concepts (C++20) — The Modern Answer to SFINAE in Interviews CRTP — The Pattern Behind Static Polymorphism, Explained Simply type_traits — is_same, decay, remove_reference in Real Interviews

Module 6

STL Mastery — Asked at Google, Meta, Amazon, Bloomberg

std::vector Internals — Capacity, Reallocation, Amortized Cost Explained std::list vs std::deque vs std::array — Choose Correctly Under Pressure std::map vs std::unordered_map — When Each Wins and Why Iterator Invalidation — The Bug That Hides Until the Interview Iterator Categories — What Every STL Power User Knows std::sort, std::find, std::transform — Use Algorithms Like a Pro std::string_view — Stop Copying Strings in Interview Code std::optional and std::variant — The Modern C++ Answer to Nullable Types Custom Comparators — Write Clean, Correct Code for Sorted Containers std::span — Safer Array Passing Without Performance Cost

Module 7

Modern C++ — What Separates 2024 Engineers from the Rest

auto — Where It Helps and Where It Quietly Breaks Your Code Lambda Expressions — Capture Correctly or Introduce Subtle Bugs Range-Based For — What's Happening Under the Hood Brace Initialization — Uniform Initialization and Its Surprising Quirks nullptr vs NULL — Why This Still Comes Up in Interviews enum class vs enum — The Safety Difference Interviewers Test if constexpr — Compile-Time Branching Explained Clearly Structured Bindings — Write Cleaner Code That Impresses Reviewers std::initializer_list — Common Interview Question on Construction

Module 8

Exception Handling — Tested at Bloomberg, Citadel, FAANG

try, catch, throw — The Mechanics Every C++ Dev Must Know Exception Safety Guarantees — Basic, Strong, Nothrow — Explain All Three noexcept — Its Real Impact on Performance and Move Semantics Stack Unwinding — What Happens to Your Objects When an Exception Flies When NOT to Use Exceptions — The Answer for Low-Latency Interviews std::terminate vs std::abort — Know the Difference Before the Interview

Module 9

Undefined Behavior — The Chapter That Makes You Dangerous

What UB Really Means — The Compiler Is Allowed to Do Anything Signed Integer Overflow — The UB That Silently Corrupts Production Code Use After Free — Spot It in Code Review Style Interview Questions Uninitialized Variables — The Bug That Only Shows Up on Demo Day Out-of-Bounds Access — Why It Doesn't Always Crash (and That's Worse)Strict Aliasing Violations — Advanced UB for Senior Engineer Interviews Data Races Are UB in C++ — Unlike Java, and Interviewers Know This Tools to Catch UB — AddressSanitizer, UBSan, Valgrind — Name Drop These

Module 10

Concurrency — The Topic That Defines Senior C++ Engineers

std::thread — Creation, Join, Detach — The Basics Done Right std::mutex and std::lock_guard — Write Thread-Safe Code Confidently Deadlocks — How They Happen and How to Prevent Them in an Interview std::condition_variable — Solve Producer-Consumer on a Whiteboard std::atomic — Basics Every Concurrent C++ Engineer Must Know Memory Ordering — Relaxed, Acquire, Release, Seq_cst — Simplified std::shared_mutex — Solve the Readers-Writers Problem Cleanly std::async, std::future, std::promise — Modern Async Patterns thread_local — When and Why, Explained for Interviews

Module 11

Design Patterns — Asked at Every Mid-Senior Interview

Singleton in C++ — The Thread-Safe Implementation Interviewers Want Factory Pattern — Write One From Scratch in an Interview Observer Pattern — Implement It Cleanly in Modern C++PIMPL Idiom — Why It Exists and When to Use It Strategy Pattern with std::function — Modern C++ Done Right Type Erasure — How std::function Works and Why Interviewers Love This

Module 12

Build It From Scratch — Live Coding Interview Prep

Build shared_ptr from Scratch — Reference Counting Explained Build unique_ptr from Scratch — Ownership Without Overhead Build a Thread-Safe Queue — The Most Asked Concurrency Coding Problem Build a Memory Pool Allocator — For Systems and Performance Interviews Build std::vector from Scratch — Dynamic Arrays Under the Hood Build an LRU Cache in C++ — Asked at Google, Meta, Amazon Build a Spin Lock Using Atomics — The Low-Latency Interview Favourite

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