[bayindirh]

> It's impossible to write complex and performant programs without pointers.

Well, I'd rather not copy around a multi-hundred-megabyte (or gigabyte) 3D object around to be able to poke its parts at will.

I'll also rather not copy its parts millions of times a second.

While not having pointers doesn't make impossible, it makes writing certain kinds of problems hard and cumbersome.

Even programming languages which do not have pointers (cough Java cough), carry pointers transparently prevent copying and performance hits.

[marcosdumay]

Well, looks like the GP missed a very common false fact:

The operations written in a program must literally represent the operations the computer will execute.

This one stops being true on high-level languages at the level of x86 assembly.

[bayindirh]

Exactly. A MOV is reduced to a register rename. An intelligent compiler can rewrite multiply/divide by 2 as shifts if it makes sense, etc.

"Assembly is not a low level language" is my favorite take, and with microcode and all the magic inside the CPU, it becomes higher level at every iteration.

[ahoka]

True. :)