There is a quote (I forget who it is attributed to), that "Unix is simple, it just takes a genius to understand its simplicity" or something like that. If you

There is a quote (I forget who it is attributed to), that "Unix is simple, it just takes a genius to understand its simplicity" or something like that. If you come from a bash/perl background to C, suddenly being so close to the bare metal can be overwhelming. Most languages go out of their way to hide how the CPU and memory actually interact. C (and C++ to the degree that it is C's offspring) is the only language that makes it this explicit. And even so, many C tutorials and textbooks will try to distract readers from this, for various reasons. I've met a few other programmers that also found pointers confusing and intimidating at first, and they, just like me, had this moment when we finally got it, and suddenly it was so simple, and we wondered how we could ever have been so stupid not to understand this. It's a mild version of the enlightenment Lisp hackers must experience when they finally get it. ;-)