I think what people are trying to imply when they value pointer experience is knowledge of how the code controls the hardware memory. You do not have to use pointers to understand this, although the minutia of dealing with pointers does provide you with significant hints.
But the short-term benefit of being instructive does not outweigh the long-term maintenance hassle of being fiddly and error prone. Even garbage collection can teach you the memory model eventually, because you have to dig deeper when you run into its limitations.
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I think what people are trying to imply when they value pointer experience is knowledge of how the code controls the hardware memory. You do not have to use pointers to understand this, although the minutia of dealing with pointers does provide you with significant hints.
But the short-term benefit of being instructive does not outweigh the long-term maintenance hassle of being fiddly and error prone. Even garbage collection can teach you the memory model eventually, because you have to dig deeper when you run into its limitations.