title: Execution speed of references vs pointers
body: <p>I recently read a discussion regarding whether managed languages are slower (or faster) than native languages (specifically C# vs C++). One person that contributed to the discussion said that the JIT compilers of managed languages would be able to make optimizations regarding references that simply isn't possible in languages that use pointers.</p>
  
  <p>What I'd like to know is what kind of optimizations that are possible on references and not on pointers?</p>
  
  <p>Note that the discussion was about execution speed, not memory usage.</p>