Yeah, I can definitely see how if you're disciplined it can be effective. But in my case, I've seen integer return values hold status codes from multiple modul

Yeah, I can definitely see how if you're disciplined it can be effective. But in my case, I've seen integer return values hold status codes from multiple modules and libraries, file handles, and enum values all in the same function just to twist everything together so that no matter where it stops executing, "rv" has some kind of value so that the ending "return rv" won't just return success. It was total madness, and it's really hard to do anything as complicated and fragile as that with early returns. I will admit though that no programming style will sufficiently protect against bad coding :). I'm sure even if this person did everything I advised, they'd still find a way to overcomplicate and confuse things. So maybe the issue is moot, or at least bigger than style.