[eplawless]

I disagree as fervently as possible; always use reference counting smart pointers. It is substantially harder to guarantee exception safety if you don't make use of them. You'll also be able to program more quickly without devoting extra mental cycles to make sure everything is cleaned up properly.

Using valgrind IN ADDITION is a good idea, but there is no reason to avoid smart pointer memory management.

[algolicious]

The best way to deal with exceptions is to disable them. Arbitrary interruptions of control flow will screw up just about any algorithm. Otherwise, you will have to reason about everything using RAII semantics, which work well much of the time. Smart pointers have the same problem. You may believe that everything is cleaned up properly with your smart pointers, until a cyclic reference happens one day.