Right, in that same class most of the rest of the students simply could not seem to understand pointers. They asked me, a fellow student, questions like "Why w

Right, in that same class most of the rest of the students simply could not seem to understand pointers. They asked me, a fellow student, questions like "Why would you ever use pointers?" The thing was, I think my lack of "jargon" made me explain the answer better than the professor did. Hence the other students asked me, not the professor. It seems to me that fancy terminology such as "referencing" and "dereferencing" is not only not common sense, but it also makes it harder to understand things when you are starting out. Perhaps as professional programmers it makes it easier to talk about algorithms between each other, but jargon is generally for the sake of exclusivity, not for the sake of convenience. I would even go so far as to suggest that anything that can be said with jargon can probably be said better with simple language. What beginning programmers are learning these days is jargon, and the definition of jargon terms, but they aren't learning what the meaning of those terms is. There is a big difference between learning the definition of something and learning its meaning.