Back in the old days, I used to prepare for interviews by writing the implementation for the (at the time) c and then c++ standard libraries. Interviewers woul

Back in the old days, I used to prepare for interviews by writing the implementation for the (at the time) c and then c++ standard libraries. Interviewers would often draw from the spec for whiteboard coding. Even if it differed from the spec, it really reduced my stress level. The obvious win was that I knew the standards backward and forward, especially which ones were thread safe when that became important. It also helped with the same sort of interviews where I'd write the function prototype and then work through the implementation with the candidate. The other huge win for me was that I ended up developing an appreciation for automated test harnesses so I could implement without bias from the control. I'm not sure I could recommend implementing your own c++11 library (other than as an embedded subset for resource-constrained systems) but it can be fun to go through and do K&R as a bit of kata.