I wouldn't learn it unless you're interested in learning new languages already or suspect you'll wind up at a job where it's necessary. If the former, that's a

I wouldn't learn it unless you're interested in learning new languages already or suspect you'll wind up at a job where it's necessary. If the former, that's a long road and my suggestion there would be to first learn languages that will make you think about programming differently and second learn languages that make programming fun -- C++ is neither, though perhaps for some people they start thinking "I don't want to program anymore", and I guess others who are exposed to C++11's new features for the first time in any language can get excited about them... If you are going to learn it, learn it in full. Understanding most of http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/index.html http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/index.html ought to be a requirement to put "C++" as a separate item from "C" on your resume; people who put "C/C++" on their resume make me more likely to believe they only know C++ as a kind of super-set of C and they will likely program C++ code in a very Cish style, also they will likely make more mistakes caused by a faulty assumption that C++ does the same thing C does -- like a keyword means the same in C++ as it does in C. A lot of places have sane requirements and restrictions on what you can do in your C++ programs there. e.g. http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.xml http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.x... But to understand the decisions you probably need to learn about the thing being discussed... And then learn why other programmers want the thing to be enforced or restricted so much. A lot of times it's just so even C++ programmers whose C++ knowledge is summarized as "C with classes!" can still be effective programmers. I wouldn't suggest learning C++11 specifically. Learn C++98, then learn what new features C++11 has on top of that (there aren't that many).