If I recall correctly, the big gripe about them at the time was understanding all of the situations in which pointers can be used outside of simply accessing da

If I recall correctly, the big gripe about them at the time was understanding all of the situations in which pointers can be used outside of simply accessing data, like setting one pointer to another one and doing pointer math with char-arrays (i.e. setting one variable's memory address to another). Like another poster said, much of this is unique to C and C++ without smart pointers.