Please explain how pointers and references work

[wh1t3crayon]

So I'm learning about pointers and references and this tutorial http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/cpp/cp4_PointerReference.html is great. However, I don't get why you need pointers and ref's. For example, here is an explanation given by that tutorial:

int number = 88;
int * pNumber = &number;  // Declare and assign the address of variable number to pointer pNumber (0x22ccec)
cout << pNumber<< endl;   // Print the content of the pointer variable, which contain an address (0x22ccec)
cout << *pNumber << endl; // Print the value "pointed to" by the pointer, which is an int (88) 

Why can I not just say
cout << number << endl; instead? It does the exact same thing, so I just don't get it. Not to mention I don't even know when to use a pointer/reference and when not to. Can somebody please explain these things?

[LB]

http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq/references.html

In modern C++ you will rarely need pointers but frequently use references.

[wh1t3crayon]

http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq/references.html

In modern C++ you will rarely need pointers but frequently use references.

Oh thank you so much, finally somebody who could explain it to a dummy.