Really what is being argued here is that C pointer optimisation is difficult - and because C is designed to do stuff like coding the insides of the 'new' primit

Really what is being argued here is that C pointer optimisation is difficult - and because C is designed to do stuff like coding the insides of the 'new' primitive (ie malloc) you can't make the sorts of assumptions about aliasing that you can in other languages. I'd argue that if you don't understand that you probably shouldn't be coding in C (I'll let others argue about C++)