Thread: Why do newer languages keep reinventing pointers?

I wasn't really sure where to ask this but I know C pretty decently and I've also been having to use other languages like python, javascript, and C# and I've noticed this odd phenomena where those languages create "new" constructs such as delegates (C#), decorators and closures (python), "first class functions" (javascript/python) etc...

Yet, all of these things are very obviously just function pointers being passed into functions as args, something that has been in C forever and totally not new to programming at all... Yet these things have cute little names and are marketed as being "new" and "cool."

Does anyone who has been around the block for a while know why this is? These languages are obviously just using pointers over and over but are simply walling their users in and hoping to prevent them from abusing pointers. Again, sorry if this question sounds silly but I had to ask a group of C programmers for obvious reasons.

if that is a truth, then it is purely psychological, because their is no real need to rename what it is, that is like reinventing the wheel that looks and acts like a wheel and does what the wheel does, but is called something completely different to try and sway others into believing it is something "new and improved" which that statement in itself is a contradiction.

If it's new then when did "they" have time to improve it? It has to be old and perhaps worn out a bit to be improved upon. (depending on what the object in question is. Programming Language vs tangible items. which can lead into a bigger discussion) to keep it short.Then it falls into a marketing ploy to try and get that other to think their new stuff is much more better then someone else's stuff that has been around longer then theirs, when they are even the same basic concepts as that the other one is using that are in theirs as well. loops are loops, functions are functions, assignments are assignments, pointers are pointers. etc...

They just call it something different instead as a means to try and convey that it is theirs, it came from them, and was developed by them, especially for their new and improved programming language. So come and use are new and improved Programming Language now, and leave that old programming language behind, because it's old and out dated.

Do you now see the deception within it?

then we have C#, is that not a windows only Programming Language that has been developed to only support (work on) Windows? Why would someone do that? What is the motivation behind that move to develop a programming language that only works on their Operating System? Would that not show or imply an act of arrogance on their part?

They are likely reinventing C++ references instead of C pointers.
But, C++ references are pointers with a many limitations.

Tim S.