> For example, if I wanted to read a little endian 32-bit integer value from a byte stream, I could write a function like this

But for the longest time people would basically dump the raw bytes of their structs from / to the network whenever possible, e.g.

    struct my_data {
        int foo, bar;
        float x,y,z;
        long dontdothat;
    } data;

    write_bytes_to_the_network((const unsigned char*) &data, sizeof(my_data));