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Why is it inaccurate to call it a reference in Java?

You don't dereference a variable in Java to access it, so that would make me think reference, not pointer.

By you do deference object variables in Java. What do you think the "." operator does?

Ah, true... so what is the difference between a reference and a pointer then?

It depends on which definition of "reference" you are talking about.

Pass-by-reference and C++ references are basically the same - aliasing without requiring dereferencing via an operator.

Java object references are like C++ pointers.

Java is pass-by-value (no aliasing) for all values (ints, bools, object references etc). Java has no object values.

'a.b()' dereferences 'a' to call its 'b' method. If 'a' is null you'll get a NullPointerException.

Alternatively, the NullPointerException could be viewed as a simple leakage of implementation details, which is a common issue with exceptions.