The link is the literary counterpart of the programming concept called a pointer. If you write for the Web and understand links, you will find it relatively easy to advance through what often is a very difficult concept for students to master. A pointer is the address of something. You pass a pointer to a procedure if the procedure is permitted to modify it, or if the thing is too big to efficiently copy.
(dave winer – the rule of links)
(via schockwellenreiter)