Questions tagged [pointers]

Questions related to teaching about pointers or references. Use this tag to ask about teaching various aspects and points regarding pointers.

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Teach smart pointers to beginners with no knowlege of OOP or templates

I have to teach an Intro to Programming class of students with some exposure to proccedural programming, arrays and loops etc. However, they have not taken any course in oop and templates. It is a ...
Mallam Awal's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
101 views

Teaching data structures with C++: should I go with smart instead of raw pointers?

I teach an intro to programming course which covers mostly the basics (data types, control flows, functions, arrays, pointers, singly linked lists, circular linked lists, doubly linked lists, without ...
Floella's user avatar
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9 votes
8 answers
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Why are pointers a key topic in a CS curriculum and oft cited as something people don't get?

I was reading a Q&A on Meta Software Engineering and saw some people make reference to pointers, as well as this SE. I see several Q&A here relating to pointers as well. I don't understand ...
YetAnotherRandomUser's user avatar
40 votes
20 answers
12k views

Is it important to teach pointers in a first course using Java?

Many instructors teaching with Java started their education using earlier languages such as C or C++ in which pointers are essential. Pointers, however, are not a Java concept, though those same ...
Buffy's user avatar
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6 votes
3 answers
287 views

Explaining pointers to highschoolers

How would you explain pointers and their use to high school students with some prior knowledge in programming, mainly in Python, but very limited knowledge of C? Note that this isn't a duplicate of ...
auden's user avatar
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8 votes
5 answers
950 views

Simple Pointer Examples in C

Thanks to feedback in this thread, I'm beginning to plan how to integrate a basic introduction to pointers into my unit on arrays. Here's a sample program I just wrote up: ...
Peter's user avatar
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