> Not a big deal, because fully functional and 100% correct program wasn't the goal here

Wasn't it? It reminds me about the old article by Strostrup on c/c++ for beginners (I seem to link to this quite often, apologies if it gets repetitive):

https://www.drdobbs.com/learning-standard-c-as-a-new-languag...

One point of using c++ over c is that it should be easier to get a program that is in fact correct - regarding things like closing files etc. (that said conciously leaking some recources ("do and die") could be considered idiomatic c i suppose).