I think there is a class of programs where globals are not so terrible. In particular, one-shot programs that do a task and then exit (like `ls`, `cp`, etc).

You may also notice that some of these utilities will allocate memory, then never free it. They just let the OS handle that on program shutdown. That is also generally not recommended in arbitrary code. But again, it's fine for a one-and-done sort of program.

For these cases, the whole program is essentially one function call, and the global namespace is essentially the "body" of that function (hand waving a bit).

It's all a bit subjective, of course (: