I love your advice: start out learning how to manage memory and it only gets easier. While ARC is great compared to manual memory management, it doesn't work on non-Objective-C object, such as CFRefs (when dealing with sound, for example).
It's even worse when you have to mix CFRefs and Objective C. Without ARC you don't need any __keywords to do so, and when you switch you know where they come from.
