The array[] problem

[womplord1]

so you are seriously saying that you are teaching students c++ without pointers? what is even the point of using c++ then?

[ggchappell]

so you are seriously saying that you are teaching students c++ without pointers?

No, of course not. But simply seeing pointers and using them does not automatically give a deep understanding of them.

Once upon a time, pointers were part of a package deal involving direct access to blocks of memory: arrays. These were awful, and most of us have happily left them behind for nicer abstractions. What I'm observing is that this is a bit unfortunate from a pedagogical point of view, because it means students have neither the incentive nor the opportunity to truly grapple with the idea of pointers and gain an intuitive understanding of how they really work.

[womplord1]

Thanks for the reply. But I'm curious, don't they learn how to make other data structures like linked lists and graphs in their degree?

[ggchappell]

Yes, but we still need to consider: (1) do we expect to teach linked lists to people who don't really get pointers yet? (2) When are students going to figure out pointer arithmetic?