You do not serve yourself by being exposed to these ideas for the first time in lecture. However, I don't expect that you will understand everything that you have read. Keep notes in the margins or in a notebook to remind you to ask them during lectures later. Programs will be due at the beginning of class. Details of program submissions will be provided with each programming assignment, but will likely include source files, test cases, and program listings.
Pointers require perfection.
I really do dock 10 points off a programming project for a mistake involving pointers. Allowing a pointer to point to memory that has been deallocated, and then dereferencing that pointer. Not initializing a pointer, and then dereferencing that pointer. Deallocating the same memory twice. Accessing an array index that is out of range.