What is the real difference between Pointers and References?

Question

AKA - What\'s this obsession with pointers?

Having only really used modern, object oriented languages like ActionScript, Java and C#, I don\'t really understand the

Answer 1

Parameter efficency - passing a pointer (Int - 4 bytes) as opposed to copying a whole (arbitarily large) object.

Java classes are passed via reference (basically a pointer) also btw, its just that in java that's hidden from the programmer.