i want to stop being a beginner

Yeah so I've taken a few c++ classes at college, up to data structures. But just because I know how to write a bs-tree doesn't mean im an EXPERT PROGRAMMER just yet. The most complicated program I've written so far is one that solves the Towers of Hanoi by brute force. I still consider myself a beginner-level programmer.

Does anyone have any tips on how to improve my skill? Like a large one-man project that will teach me how to write & manage larger programs? Whenever I got the book store and look at the programming sections everything is either TEACH YOURSELF JAVA IN 24 HOURS or like START C++ FOR THE MENTALLY RETARDED. Everything is aimed at beginners but I want to move on.

protips?

Libraries are built from the ground up on C strings, so even if you work with the C++ string construct, you have to convert them back. Receive input from the user? It's in an array. C++ is polymorphic, but the standard library has not a shred of effort into returning C++ strings based on context. So it's a kludge that could only be "forgotten" by creating new languages like Python and Java, altogether.

The reason I bothered to put the code example is to show how to build up a string, but you end up having to combine C++ and C strings. In some extreme cases you need to use stringbuffer constructs, to pass data around. You'll google a lot just to process a bit of data back and forth, specially if you interact with the Windows API, where you need those pesky LPCTSTR things which are C chars or wchars, instead of C++ based. OS's don't facilitate C++ strings because they're are written in C, even if your code is compiled in C++.

Just sad, really.