In addition to what is talked about below, using value semantics (with mutable or immutable objects) can be helpful. Lots of types can be given value semantics and end up more efficient (most people think copying == less efficient, always) due to the lack of pointers and the locality destroying/cache unfriendliness they introduce. In my experience if you see new/delete in C++ code you should be immediately questioning who owns that object, how it is shared and how/when it is destroyed. I can't even count the number of times I have seen one object new up something and then share a raw pointer with N other objects, who then either have to coordinate who calls delete or, the creator itself does so, and you may have use-after-free issues. unique_ptr and shared_ptr, or their moral equivalents, help avoid most of these issues. As a bonus shared_ptr enables weak_ptr, which can also be very handy for non-owning users and breaking cycles in object graphs.