For languages that have a custom parser written for it (currently only C#) you can absolutely omit the first line. For all other languages it needs the line to

For languages that have a custom parser written for it (currently only C#) you can absolutely omit the first line. For all other languages it needs the line to know what its documenting and how to include the prototype since it's relying on a more generic parser. This lets it work with almost any language, and you can even add support for new languages just by editing a text file, but it admittedly makes it more verbose.