And I think that is a valuable lesson too. As a developer, the end-goal is to produce something of value, working software, not spend hours frowning over pointers and references. That was my early experience with C/C++, in any case. I did end up finishing my assignments (ranging from a fractal generator via a microcontroller operating an RC boat to a simple 3D FPS game), but I did feel a lot of overhead with non-functional things.

Of course, you get the same thing in Java when you first encounter a NullPointerException, ;)