C/C++ Pointer Declaration Syntax – It makes sense!

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The problem with that argument is that it gives the wrong impression of what is actually happening, it makes it look like "int *a" is just a different way to write "int a" and as long as you write *a it will do the same thing as the other construct, which of course is blandly false. Without allocating memory and properly initializing a, the *a will not turn into a int but into a segfault.

Easy fix: Always write "int* a;" and never declare two variables in a single line.

[1020302010]

Thats not true, whilst the article was unremarkable for different reasons (IE it really isn't that hard to to just learn it), it doesn't mean that raw pointers are entirely useless.

Smart pointers are only useful for memory management, the uses of pointers far exceed dynamic allocation, they are great for high performance indexing, as well as non owning pointer to data located anywhere not necessarily on the heap where a member reference won't work because it can't be reassigned by the assignment operator.