Is there any way to not have to write function declarations twice (headers) and still retain the same scalability in compiling, clarity in debugging, and flexibility in desi
You can do without headers. But, why spend effort trying to avoid carefully worked out best practices that have been developed over many years by experts.
When I wrote basic, I quite liked line numbers. But, I wouldn't think of trying to jam them into C++, because that's not the C++ way. The same goes for headers... and I'm sure other answers explain all the reasoning.