I am a computer science student, and as a result, I was taught C++ as a better version of C with classes. I end up trying to reinvent the wheel whenever a solution to a complex problem is needed, only to find sometime after that, some language feature or some standard library routine could potentially have done that for me.

I'm all comfortable with my char* and *(int*)(someVoidPointer) idioms, but recently, after making a (minor) contribution to an open-source project, I feel that is not how one's supposed to think when writing C++ code. It's much different than C is.

Considering that I know objected-oriented programming fairly well, and I am okay with a steep learning curve, what would you suggest for me to get my mind on the C++ track when I'm coding C++?