Pointers are so easy to work with that they're still the cause of major security flaws and crashing programs every single day. The concept of pointers isn't to

Pointers are so easy to work with that they're still the cause of major security flaws and crashing programs every single day. The concept of pointers isn't too hard if you know how memory works, but that hasn't made working with pointers any easier. Any serious work with pointers quickly devolves into questions about ownership, lifetimes, and figuring out the proper sizes. Plus, many educators seem to skip verifying that students actually know how memory works before introducing pointers, which leads some students to believe that pointers are some kind of language feature rather than a core concept of modern computer hardware.