Chapter 2: Description of what a pointer is.

[msiism]

In chapter 2, when introducing pointers, the book says:

A pointer is a memory address; it's the location of where to find the actual value. It's a level of indirection. Loosely, it's the difference between being at a house and having directions to the house.

Now, I'm by no means an experienced programmer and just started with Go two hours ago. I do have a little bit of C experience, though. And I think that the last sentence in the above quote might not really be an adequate real-world analogy of what a pointer is.

I'd say a pointer is more like the coordinates of a house on the map, i.e., kind of a raw address instead of being given directions. For example, let's say there's a liquor store at 64°10′30″N 51°44′20″W. Then those coordinates would be like a pointer to liquor, the value you're trying to retrieve. Further, let's say that that liquor store is called “The House of Liquor”. If you'd take a taxi to get there, you wouldn't ask the driver to drop you at 64°10′30″N 51°44′20″W. Rather, you'd ask to be taken to “The House of Liquor”. In short, “The House of Liquor” is like a variable name, while the coordinates of that place would be equivalent to a pointer, wouldn't they?

[karlseguin]

Yes, I could have said

Loosely, it's the difference between being at a house and having the address of the house.

It's been a while, but I might have been trying to capture the expense / motion of the indirection, which I feel "direction" better captures. It feels like I'm in the car actually going to the house, which involves work; whereas address / location is just a static piece of information which doesn't necessarily involve resolution. Which, again, is true, the address by itself is useful (and can be used directly), but that's a more advanced topic.

Or maybe I just didn't think about it so much and was happy with the first thing that kinda sounded right.