This article discusses a common confusion between references and pointers that will be familiar to many faculty members teaching programming courses. It does so in the guise of a conversation between a faculty member and a student. In this conversation, the faculty member resolves the confusion in a manner that is somewhat different from the resolution commonly heard, at least by the author. More importantly, this article attempts to illustrate how important programming concepts can become obscured by the language used in a curriculum, and how such confusions can be leveraged to encourage the student to think beyond the bounds of the language that is being used, thereby gaining a deeper understanding of programming languages in general.
['Paul H. Schimpf']
You say reference , I say pointer : a clarification