Outside of standard template uses, the operation I find most useful about the information talked about generic C++ programming, is the ability to use templates to create compile time errors for invalid code scenarios. Once you get the hang of it you can become very efficient at turning a class of what would be a runtime bug into a compile time error.
I've had a lot of success doing that at work. Sure it produces completely unreadable messages and my coworkers occasionally drop by and say "what in the world is that?". But every time it was a bug and they weren't able to compile it. I also heavily comment the particular errors in the hope that it's moderately understandable.
