I've had 2 phone interviews last week, and I await feedback from those.

I need a finger to point me in the right direction, but first some background.

I've been working as a data analyst mainly using SQL and some perl/bash mainly as tools for automating some DB tasks. I started learning "real programming" in my spare time using C++ and practicing on project euler problems. I then found hackerrank, hackerearth, topcoder, codinggame and maybe a few others like that which adds the competitive element to it, which I find more fun.

I got lucky at a hackerrank contest, when I knew the alg for one of the harder questions, which gave me a good rank, and that's when a recruiter contacted me for the first time. After speaking to him he told me to go study first then get back to him afterwards. He recomended leetcode for practicing :)

Since then I've done an online course on data structures and algs where I eventually learned the STL containers (it helps faster code in contests and cleaner code in general) and started reading up on C++. (C++ Primer 5th Edition)

So I generally do well on the interview questions, like the mock tests here, but I might struggle with topics outside of that, and i don't really know where to get some "real" practice on some of the concepts.

Some areas I know I need to work on are

OO principals

• I've read the stuff in the text book, but I've had no practice on it, other than using classes on some codinggame or AI contests because if you don't your code becomes so messy that you don't even know what you trying to do anymore.

Error handling

• I've only ever handled errors by writing an error message to STDERR. I need to get into the habit of using try, throw and catch, after learning how first.

I'd like some advise on what other areas I need to work on (which I may not be aware of), and maybe a good way to get some practice on some of these/those areas. I'm also hoping that the interview feedback is constructive in this regard, but I guess I'll have to wait and see.