Knowing C++ Beyond a Beginner Level

Nerval's Lobster writes: C++ is not an easy language to master, but many people are able to work in it just fine without being a 'guru' or anything along those lines. That being said, what separates C++ beginners from those with 'intermediate' skills, or even masters? According to this Dice article, it comes down to knowledge of several things, including copy constructors, virtual functions, how to handle memory leaks, the intricacies of casting, Lambda functions for C++11, (safe) exception handling and much more. All that being said, is there one particular thing or point that separates learners from masters?

Comments

Re:Knowing when not to

[TheRaven64]

If you can't be replaced, then you can't be promoted. Do you really want to be maintaining the same program for the rest of your life? And do you want to have a reference that says 'no one can understand this guy's code' when you leave for the next job?

Re:which part

[MiskatonicAcademic]

Scientific (matlab but faster): who cares, you just want the answer, not the software, right?

Not always true. Sure, there is plenty of well-motivated ad-hoc coding in scientific research. However, we sometimes have supercomputers working for months to generate the answer. Even with well-written software this could mean many core-years of number crunching. Without good high-performing software we would not get the answer at all. Developing good scientific software takes time and effort too, but if the software can be used over and over to efficiently solve >1000 problems (for instance, the GROMACS papers have been cited by users ~15,000 times), then the time invested can be very good use of taxpayer money. C++ is not a bad choice for such software in that it enables very good performance and decent maintainability.