[orib]

From what I've seen helping people I know handle pointers, they're really actually having trouble with the concepts of pointers. Getting them to draw the box diagrams with pointers correctly is challenging. The notation is an extra challenge, but it's not the main difficulty.

It's not the notation, it is the concept.

[stcredzero]

Only time I've seen difficulty with pointers in the abstract is when helping people in intro programming classes in C. Once you're past that level, programmers get it, but they get confused by what the code is actually saying.