>we had coding hints to ALWAYS use braces, as the single line might not stay single forever ;-)
>(and maintainance dev were expected to miss missing curly braces)

Me too. I was also told to always do this:

int foo(int x)
{
    .
    .
    switch (x)
    {
        case 4:
            return -1;
            break;        // Always include a break in a case statement
        .
        .
        .
    }
}

It's simple: some things we were taught by well-meaning people were just plain wrong. :-)