How in the world to C people cope with the lack of generics or higher-order anything.

"There's 5 types, and they go from one type to another type. That's 5 x 5 combinations with no repetitions, guess I'm just gonna add that. Then there's 3 error handlers, so you need to do 5 x 5 x 3. And then there's a few sub-genres, so that's 3 x 3 x 3 to add on,"

Maybe this is why all the C interfaces are untyped and unsafe. Doing it any other way is basically like loading up a combinatoric shotgun and flipping it around to point at your own chest.