I agree with you for the most part. C/C++ lets you do what you want, presumably because you know what you're doing. But I don't agree that pointers are evil, and should be avoided. If you want to do any practical programming with C/C++ at all, you have to learn how to dynamically allocate memory and use pointers. Generally, pointers work as advertised. It's the cases where they work when they shouldn't that is the problem. In these cases a compiler usually warns you, so you are still covered. So in C/C++, just because it works, doesn't mean your code is right.