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Asked: 2026-06-12T11:44:57+00:00

As my first programming language I learned Java, but since I changed to a

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As my first programming language I learned Java, but since I changed to a different University, I am now learning C++.

Coming from Java and learning the basics of C++, I read about references and reference variables. And how dangerous they can be, and how to be careful with them and so on.

So in my head arises one simple question:
Why should I bother using that kind of complicated, and therefore potentially problem-causing, stuff at all?

Is it somehow worth it, or just a relic from times where RAM was about 64MB big?

Since a lot of answers have mentioned pointers: That concept is clearly from the stone age, imho. Except for high-performance-computation I wouldn’t even touch that stuff.

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  1. Editorial Team

    The problem is not related to references itself.

    The problem is that in C++, object lifetime is managed differently than in Java or other run-time environments that use a garbage collector. C++ doesn’t have standard built-in garbage collector. C++ object lifetime can be automatic (within local or global scope) or manual (explicitly allocated/deallocated in heap).

    A C++ reference is just a simple alias for an object. It doesn’t know anything about object lifetime (for the sake of efficiency). The programmer must care about it. An exception is the special case where a reference is bound to a temporary object; in this case, the lifetime of the temporary is extended to lifetime of the bound reference. Details are here.

    References are an important part of C++ basic concepts and you just cannot avoid using them for 90% of tasks. Otherwise you have to use pointers, which is usually even worse 🙂

    E.g., when you need to pass object as function argument by reference instead of by value you can use references:

    void f(A copyOfObj);       // Passed by value, f receives copy of passed A instance
void f(A& refToObj);       // Passed by ref, f receives passed A instance itself, modifiable
void f(const A& refToObj); // Passed by const ref, f receives passed A instance itself, non modifiable
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