Indeed. After reading the OP and finally getting a handle on how linkers, assemblers, compilers, etc. work, I asked myself why functions weren't just implicit.

Indeed. After reading the OP and finally getting a handle on how linkers, assemblers, compilers, etc. work, I asked myself why functions weren't just implicit. Turns out K&R thought the same, but the solution sucked because it assumes an int return, which may not be what the function actually returns.