PPT Slide

Java is advertised as “having no pointers.”

In reality, Java is mostly pointers!

Every non-primitive datum must be an object. All objects are dynamic data, accessible via references. And references are really implicit pointers.

Java does not have explicit pointers:

There exists no way to explicitly manipulate pointers. There is no explicit dereferencing operator

So:

if you don’t know about pointers, then

references are “magic”

if you do understand pointers, then

you know what references really are!

References vs. Pointers