Discussion on answer by richard: Is it important to teach Pointers in a first course using Java?

By analogy: A power plant technician who knows only the exact maintenance techniques in his equipment manuals and doesn't understand electricity or physics, will be unable to adapt when the plant gets all new equipment that works entirely differently. But the technician who understands what he is doing and how it relates to transforming the voltage and modifying the current in other ways, will be able to adapt. The first technician is still employable, but he won't remain so.

Sometimes I think that when teaching that we need to start at the bottom. Other times I think we need to start at the top.

If you said, "pointers are not just not fundamental to learning about how references work" I could see where you were going. But saying "pointers are not fundamental in any way" is not the same thing.

I would agree that pointer are fundamental to most architectures, most CPUs, with regard to how they work. But to what they do, then I think that they are not [fundamental].

It is better to start with simpler, more concrete concepts and then build on that to make abstractions. Teaching abstractions first leaves people without 'references' to comprehend what they are doing. It isn't just how ''I'' learned, it is how everyone learns. New Math failed.