[quietbritishjim]

> You can't entirely rely on it to know a dereference is happening because references (e.g. `int&`) aren't subject to the `->` requirement.

That's true but I think the bigger motivation is avoiding ambiguity than seeing when an indirection is happening. (You also can't see whether a method is virtual, i.e. indirecting via the vtable, from the call site.) In C++ references don't have any standalone methods or operators so there's no ambiguity from using methods via a reference just using a dot.