C++ Core Programming and Debugging

This unit develops core C++ skills in memory management, object-oriented design, standard library use, and debugging tools. Students will build on foundational syntax to design classes and hierarchies, manage lifetime and pointers, process I/O and strings, and apply language features like lambdas and templates to prepare for application-scale development.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze and manage variable lifetime and dynamic memory by distinguishing stack vs. heap allocation, creating and freeing raw pointers, and implementing constructors and destructors in class definitions
• Apply object-oriented principles to design and implement classes and relationships by encapsulating data, defining member functions, building hierarchies, and implementing patterns such as Singleton and Observer
• Demonstrate use of the C++ Standard Library and related tools for input/output and string processing by implementing stream-based I/O, formatting output, handling end-of-file, reading directories, and parsing tokens with hashing and tokenizer utilities
• Evaluate and debug C++ programs and advanced language features by using IDE/debugger tools (breakpoints, watch/inspect, modify variables), and by reasoning about lambdas, templates, unevaluated contexts, and user-defined literals