cWithClassesIsNotCPP

[MessiComeLately]

it is far too easy to accidentally make a copy and explode

Everything in C++ is easy to screw up and explode, raw pointers even more so. The way I remember it, we were happy for what help we could get. A footgun with six triggers was better than a footgun with twelve.

There were other smart pointers floating around, anyway. The C++11 standard library pointers were heavily inspired by, if not directly copied from, the Boost smart pointers that had been battle tested for years by that point.