[Please redirect any replies to this to "Programming", as I should have done in the first place. I just forgot where we were at... See now, Scott, why we need to be able to redirect on edit? :^]

And C/C++ is definitely one of the more abuse-prone ones, when it comes to pointers. Sure, the Byzantine pointer usage can be said to be the fault of the practitioners... But why, then, is such an overwhelming majority of C/C++ code just such a Byzantine mess? Are you saying the language(s) attract (at least comparatively) moronic coders?

No, I think there's something wrong in the language itself; something that positively encourages such over- (or ab-) use of pointers. Perhaps, as the flip side to your "languages that don't allow them are brain damaged" coin, C/C++ is/are at least equally brain damaged language(s) because they *don't* allow you to do a lot of stuff *without* pointers -- everybody going, "that's easy, just use pointers!" when the question comes up -- that you really *ought to* be able to do without them?