It was impossible for me to wrap my head around the concept of a pointer during the first two years of computer science. Anyone else? - ThreadSky

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bytevagabond.bsky.social • 5 hours ago

It was impossible for me to wrap my head around the concept of a pointer during the first two years of computer science.

Anyone else?

Comments

adaptiveanalysis.org•5 hours ago

I got my start with z-80 machine code ( https://orng.org/#adg ). I suspect that anybody that started with machine code, including me, tracked just fine with pointers. I thought the big O was stupid, and switched to a math degree over it. I was young and reactionary. My biggest problem was/is SQL joins.

burke.su•2 hours ago

I avoided the concept and didn't really pay attention in class until the night an assignment was due where I had to implement a linked list in C. With a burst of procrastination-induced motivation, I watched three hours of lectures on YouTube about pointers. That knowledge made C a lot less scary.

trudeau.dev•4 hours ago

C was my 2nd language. I learned it in high school, which was quite unusual at the time. My teacher had a minor in CS. Midway through teaching pointers he visibly had an "ah-ha" moment where it finally clicked for him. Just before that he said "if & doesn't work, switch to *". You are not alone.

tothestarsgaming.bsky.social•5 hours ago

are you talking about GUI cursors or directory symlinks in CLI... or something else?

kaboosemoose.bsky.social•4 hours ago

Memory reference pointers?

wx1g.bsky.social•2 hours ago

Pointers, with themselves weren't a huge difficult thing for me but, some of the complicated data structures, like balanced trees and circular linked list caused me angst.

nerdrium.bsky.social•5 hours ago

100%. Same thing with OO at first. I honestly don't wonder if years of hacking away on an Apple //e as a kid didn't hurt my understanding of these CS concepts. (Now of course I'll stop unsuspecting graduate students and corner them with a "here's why 'goto' is/was bad...' lecture....) ;)

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