Pointers are useful. It is the core of C and C++. You must be fluent in it.
You can practice on Windows (using GCC from Cygwin or MinGW) or on Linux using native GCC, write small programms, play with pointers. The point of this is that these OS will catch 99.9% of your "pointer bugs" by briefly informing you, that "core dumped"
Not the first time I hear that "pointers are not for newbies". They are. They are for everyone. It is the foundation of the language.