The trouble with C++ is that it maintains backwards compatibility with C, so every error-prone thing you could do in C, you can still do in C++, even though C++ may have a better way.

The modern, safest, way to use C++, is to use smart pointers rather than raw pointers, which guarantee that nothing gets deleted until there are no more references to it, and that at that point it will get deleted.

Of course raw pointers and new/delete, even malloc/free, all have their uses, and without these low level facilities you wouldn't be able to create better alternatives like smart pointers, but use these at your own peril, and don't blame the language if you mess up, when you could have just done it the safe way!

You can also do that intentionally and correctly. After all `delete this;` is a valid statement that can occasionally be useful. That said, I’ve only seen this in old pre-C++11 code that does not adhere to the RAII best practice.

Well, you can also write:

   int x = 123;
   delete &x;

In modern C++, we avoid allocating and deallocating ourselves, as much as possible. But of course, if you jump to arbitrary code, or overwrite something that's due as input for deallocation with the wrong address, or similar shenanigans, then - it could happen.