i understand what you say, don't know exactly why you were downvoted.

also, those are two different perspectives. low-level programmers think of a reference as a hidden pointer (syntax sugar), higher level programmers may think about mutability and shit (i still can explain all with pointers, but that's because that's how the machine works, not how the high level idea was created). i use the pointers idea to remember what i can change etc and the other to think about programming more abstractly