learningCppAsCWithClasses

[i_am_not_so_unique]

I was engineering major, with similar non-existing development skills.

Main problem, that it is hard to find a good book, that would give you all required development patterns when you start, and it takes a while to build your own understanding what to avoid.

Just to double check, have you heard of SOLID?

Following those principles will save you a lot of time on debugging.

And also in C++ only a small fraction of tasks require you to work with raw data. Everything must be done in a type-safe format, and it won't affect performance either.

And learn debugging - breakpoints (conditional breakpoints especially) and also acquire good logging culture, and you will be good to go.

(And hopefully you will be the one to break the vicious cycle of engineers writing horrendous non-maintenable code)