Then read some code and write some code. Don’t worry about efficiency. You can read the “core guidelines” as well which are quite useful, but for a complete beginner many of them will be more than you need.

Like Lisp, C++ is a multi paradigm language: you can write procedural, o-o, and other styles of code. It has a pretty powerful type system.

Don’t worry about old, c-inspired c++. If you know C, as a learner consider c++’s relationship with C to be no different from Java’s or even Python’s relationship with C: some common syntax and conventions. Of course C++ is indeed more tightly coupled with C, but if you think of it that way you will make your life significantly harder, especially when starting out.

I find c++ pretty convenient for rapidly prototyping something that runs reasonably quickly. Then if I care I have enormous power for optimizing...but it’s often unnecessary.