[Alupis]

> but mostly everything is boxed behind a pointer.

Behind a Reference would be more accurate. It's just a reference to a spot in the heap. Other than similarly "pointing" to a place in memory, the comparison between Java References and C Pointers stops there. One cannot pass a "pointer" in Java, nor can the pointer be free-form manipulated like in pointer-arithmetic.

[burntsushi]

My statement is perfectly accurate in the context, which is discussing the representation of Java types.

Java doesn't hold a monopoly on the word "pointer." For example, Go has pointers but doesn't allow pointer arithmetic in safe code. Similarly for Rust.