Not having my 'a-ha' moment with pointers until years into my education when doing assembly made me wonder why we don't start with a half-adder and work our way up from there instead of throwing novices right into C++ or Java OOP with no context.

That's how my comp sci degree went at Georgia Tech. There was a data structures and algorithms class first that used Java but then 2110 was building a computer from the (simulated) transistors up. I would've never understood pointers or C in general otherwise lol