Question

[true steppe]

This question is incredibly vague, but in the general case, you will use pointers in Zig yes

[scarlet girder]

Not everywhere, but also not never

You use them when needed

A single element of a type is best passed directly as a value instead of as a pointer to the value

Unless this single element is very large like a big structure or array

Or when you need that element to survive for longer than the current scope, so you do dynamic allocation

And when you have more than one of that element and you don't know how many ahead of time, pointers are almost necessary