noobs and pointers

[James Kanze]

Could not the same be said of using auto objects?

Certainly. But I never asked "why should a program be forced to
depend on unsafe, raw auto objects?"

Either way it's up
to the programmer to use the idiom correctly.

Yup. That, and choosing the right idiom, are exactly my points.

 

[Roland Pibinger]

And most of the time, if an object has identity,
it also has an explicit lifetime, which must be managed; you
can't foster such management off to a container.

Exactly. A Container is not necessarily a lifetime manager. People who
advocate 'smart containers' often misunderstand this.