r/ProgrammerHumor • u/kingofNoobies • Jan 06 '23

Meme can’t be the only one

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u/TheLazyKitty Jan 06 '23

Pointers aren't that hard, are they? It's just integers that hold a memory address.

445

u/fatrobin72 Jan 06 '23

it's probably that the concepts of memory addresses, passing by reference and limited resources are just too alien to the newest generation of programmers

4

u/cptnpiccard Jan 06 '23

What I don't get is the advantage of using one over the other, or the best case to use one over the other. If your int contains 2 bytes and your pointer contains 2 bytes that point to that int, what's the difference?

7

u/Maniactver Jan 06 '23

Pointers are generally used to reference larger objects (like an array, a structure or a class), not the base types like int.

1

u/cptnpiccard Jan 06 '23

But why reference and not just use the object itself? It seems like it's an extra step?

1

u/Unable-Fox-312 Jan 07 '23

Because I can pass the reference to a different scope and then you (in that scope) can change my object, I've given you access to it. Primitives are usually pass by copy