Getting Used to Pointers with Pointer Drills
Michael Guerzhoy · 2025
When you start out reading C code, reading code can feel like reading a foreign language: you get lost in a sea of asterisks, dots, arrows, and ampersands. Experienced C programmers write pointer code the way fluent users of math and language write: they do not necessarily always need to reason from first principles. We propose learning to use pointers the way students learn algebra in school: doing a large number of small exercises. John von Neumann famously said that ''[i]n mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them.'' We hope that our drill exercises enable both getting used to pointers and understanding them. Our exercises and solutions are available at https://CPointerDrills.github.io/ .