It's all about backwards compatibility. C++ was originally a modification to C, which does not have the concept of references. In fact, while C++ was created in

It's all about backwards compatibility. C++ was originally a modification to C, which does not have the concept of references. In fact, while C++ was created in 1979, references were not added until 1985, so there's no way that they could have been the default anyway. There's no way that it will be changed, either, as changing language behavior would break tons of production code.