After a recent talk I gave on C++ AMP, one attendee was complaining that they were not familiar with lambdas and another found templates hard to parse. In case you are in the same boat, I thought I'd gather some essential reading material for you (also gives me one link to use in the future for referring people to ;-)

Lambdas are available (in some shape or form) in all modern languages, so do yourself a favor and learn about them:

• Lambda Expressions in C++ (and also syntax and examples)
• Watch Herb Sutter's full length session on lambdas at PDC 2010

Templates, have been around in modern languages for even longer than lambdas (e.g. Generics in .NET), so again go dive in:

• Templates topic with full table of contents linking to subtopics

In fact, why don't you refresh your knowledge and read the entire msdn C++ Language Reference – that's what I am doing!

If you are looking to keep up to date with what is happening in the C++ world, stay tuned on the Visual C++ team (aka WinC++ team) blog and ask questions in the C++ forums.