I knew some C before taking an assembly language class (and I'm young enough that assembly never came up as a thing to learn before hitting higher-level languages). I understood pointers (mostly), but the concept was still a little confusing, and I'd have to consider the correct syntax every time I needed to use them.

Years later, I started doing things like writing an NES emulator and reading disassemblies of DOS games. Function calls, their relation to the stack, and pointers in general became much clearer after having contact with that much assembly.

> I surely have not figured out how to explain pointers to those who do not "get" them.

Makes me think about the difference between the data being represented and the method of representation. Sure, an exe's a binary, but it's also a data file if I choose to interpret it that way.