I wouldn't say pointers themselves are not well understood. The concept itself is painfully simple. The problem is that code that abuses pointer tricks can very

I wouldn't say pointers themselves are not well understood. The concept itself is painfully simple. The problem is that code that abuses pointer tricks can very quickly become poorly understood. For the type of software JPL writes, they'd rather sacrifice a bit of speed for easily verifiable correctness. My reading of this document is that they treat pointers like Java (and others, of course) treats references, conceptually.