Back when I was a kid and was learning C, I used to wonder why people considered pointers hard.
My usage of pointers was like:

void func (int * arg1)
{
    // do sth with arg1
}
int main ()
{
    int x;
    func (&x);
    return 0;
}

I didn't know stuff like malloc and never felt the need in any of the program logic for the little thingies I made.
Pointers are not hard. Memory management makes it hard.