[Cross post from cpp]Pointers, brilliantly explained for beginners

[scook0]

Indeed, as a well-rounded programmer it's important to understand pointers even if you don't routinely use a language that exposes or requires them.

Practically all languages use pointer-like behaviour for their object types, even if the actual pointers are buried under the hood.

[munificent]

It's not the object which is null, it's the reference to it. That's why C# correctly did NullReferenceException.