> And they're correct. In most modern languages it's fine. The "no early returns" rule does not apply to Java, TypeScript, C#, Rust, Python, etc. Because these languages specifically made early return habitable.

Early return is perfectly manageable in C as long as you aren't paranoid about function inlining. You just have a wrapper that does unconditional setup, passes the acquired resources to a worker, and unconditionally cleans up. Then the worker can return whenever it likes, and you don't need any gotos either.

> In C, you just have a wrapper that does unconditional setup, passes the acquired resources to a worker, and unconditionally cleans up. Then the worker can return whenever it like

Right, so you allow early return only in functions that do not have any setup and clean-up - where it's safe. Something like "pure" functions. And you describe a way to extract such functions from others.