Why don't some languages allow declaration of pointers?

Question

I\'m programming in C++ right now, and I love using pointers. But it seems that other, newer languages like Java, C#, and Python don\'t allow you to explicitly declare point

Answer 1

Pointers aren't bad. Pointers are difficult. The reason you can't have int x and int * y in Java, C#, etc., is that such languages want to put you away from solving coding problems (which are eventually subtle mistakes of yours), and they want to bring you closer to producing solutions to your project. They want to give you productivity.

As I said before, pointers aren't bad, they're just diffucult. In a Hello World programs pointers seems to be a piece of cake. Nevertheless when the program start growing, the complexity of managing pointers, passing the correct values, counting the objects, deleting the pointers, etc. start to get complex.

Now, from the point of view of the programmer (the user of the language, in this case you) this would lead to another problem that will become evident over the time: the longer it takes you don't read the code, the more difficult it will become to understand it again (i.e. projects from past years, months or event days). Added to this the fact that sometimes pointers use more than one level of indirection (TheClass ** ptr).

Last but not least, there are topics when the pointers application is very useful. As I mention before, they aren't bad. In Algorithms field they are very useful because in mathemical context you can refer to a specific value using a simple pointer (i.e. int *) and change is value without creating another object, and ironically it becomes easier to implement the algorithms with the use of pointers rather than without it.

Reminder: Each time when you ask why pointers or another thing is bad or is good, instead try to think in the historical context around when such topic or technology emerged and the problem that they tried to solve. In this case, pointers where needed to access to the memory of the PDP computers at Bell laboratories.