C++ For Artists: The Art, Philosophy, And Science Of Object-Oriented Programming

Research: Procure a copy of Bertrand Meyer's excellent book Object-Oriented Software Construction, Second Edition, and read it from front to back.

Research: Procure a copy of Robert C. Martin's excellent book Designing Object-Oriented C++ Applications Using The Booch Method. (Although the Booch diagramming notation has been largely superseded by the Unified Modeling Language, this book is still, in my opinion, a must-read for intermediate and advanced students of the C++ language.)

Research: Conduct a web search for the keywords Liskov substitution principle, open-closed principle, dependency inversion principle, and Meyer design by contract programming.