Design and coding style rules are distilled from the examples. Understanding and following these rules will help professional programmers design and write better C++ programs. A chapter is devoted to each of the following topics: * abstractions * operator overloading * consistency * wrappers * unnecessary inheritance * efficiency * virtual functions Building on the programming rules introduced in the first seven chapters, Cargill presents a case study in which a single program undergoes repeated transformations that improve its overall quality while reducing its size. The book concludes with a chapter on multiple inheritance.