I started programming before OOP was widely adopted (C++ was available on some platforms but costly). The C code we worked on wasn't structured very rigorously

I started programming before OOP was widely adopted (C++ was available on some platforms but costly). The C code we worked on wasn't structured very rigorously. There were really no rules or guidelines. I worked on telecommunications software, compilers, and databases. C structs were used obviously to hold data. Structs were created after analyzing the data to be stored, determining multiplicities, lifetime, etc. C functions were frequently large and handled numerous concerns. Programmers usually started with one function and split off other functions as needed mostly to take advantage of commonality and to avoid deep nesting.