Welcome to the club! megaadam wrote: Scott Meyers is an excellent writer: Effctive STL [^] I concur. Also as a summary of the book, std::vector and std::string will be the container you want for 90% of your tasks. Learn those and your well on your way. Then learn what's in <algorithms> You will also need to learn about std::shared_ptr and std::weak_ptr which are not in this book. But there are plenty of places on the web to learn about it. http://www.amazon.com/The-Standard-Library-Tutorial-Reference/dp/0201379260[^] This is a good in depth reference book, but it was written in 1999.