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AWK vs C#: What are the differences?
# Introduction
In this Markdown code snippet, we will outline the key differences between AWK and C# in a concise manner.
1. **Syntax**: AWK uses a simple syntax with patterns and actions separated by curly braces, while C# has a more complex syntax with semicolons to terminate statements and curly braces to define code blocks.
2. **Purpose**: AWK is primarily used for text processing and pattern matching, whereas C# is a general-purpose programming language designed for building a wide range of applications.
3. **Type System**: AWK is dynamically typed, meaning that variables do not have predefined types, while C# is statically typed, requiring variable types to be declared before use.
4. **Control Structures**: AWK provides limited control structures such as if-else and while loops, whereas C# offers a wide variety of control structures including switch statements, foreach loops, and more.
5. **Object-Oriented Programming**: C# is an object-oriented language with support for classes, objects, inheritance, and polymorphism, which is not a native feature in AWK.
6. **Platform Support**: C# is designed to work on the .NET framework and is supported on multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, and macOS, while AWK is typically used on Unix-based systems.
In Summary, the key differences between AWK and C# lie in their syntax, purpose, type system, control structures, object-oriented programming support, and platform compatibility. Each language serves distinct purposes and is tailored to different programming needs.
In 2015 as Xelex Digital was paving a new technology path, moving from ASP.NET web services and web applications, we knew that we wanted to move to a more modular decoupled base of applications centered around REST APIs.
To that end we spent several months studying API design patterns and decided to use our own adaptation of CRUD, specifically a SCRUD pattern that elevates query params to a more central role via the Search action.
Once we nailed down the API design pattern it was time to decide what language(s) our new APIs would be built upon. Our team has always been driven by the right tool for the job rather than what we know best. That said, in balancing practicality we chose to focus on 3 options that our team had deep experience with and knew the pros and cons of.
For us it came down to C#, JavaScript, and Ruby. At the time we owned our infrastructure, racks in cages, that were all loaded with Windows. We were also at a point that we were using that infrastructure to it's fullest and could not afford additional servers running Linux. That's a long way of saying we decided against Ruby as it doesn't play nice on Windows.
That left us with two options. We went a very unconventional route for deciding between the two. We built MVP APIs on both. The interfaces were identical and interchangeable. What we found was easily quantifiable differences.
We were able to iterate on our Node based APIs much more rapidly than we were our C# APIs. For us this was owed to the community coupled with the extremely dynamic nature of JS. There were tradeoffs we considered, latency was (acceptably) higher on requests to our Node APIs. No strong types to protect us from ourselves, but we've rarely found that to be an issue.
As such we decided to commit resources to our Node APIs and push it out as the core brain of our new system. We haven't looked back since. It has consistently met our needs, scaling with us, getting better with time as continually pour into and expand our capabilities.
C# and .Net were obvious choices for us at LiveTiles given our investment in the Microsoft ecosystem. It enabled us to harness of the .Net framework to build ASP.Net MVC, WebAPI, and Serverless applications very easily. Coupled with the high productivity of Visual Studio, it's the native tongue of Microsoft technology.
If you have a file (demo.txt
) that has 3 columns:
Column-1 Column-2 Column-3
Row-1a Row-2a Row-3a
Row-1b Row-2b Row-3b
Row-1c Row-2c Row-3c
Row-1d Row-2d Row-3d
Row-1e Row-2e Row-3e
and you want to only view the first column of the file in your CLI, run the following:
awk {'print $1'} demo.txt
Column-1
Row-1a
Row-1b
Row-1c
Row-1d
Row-1e
If you want to print the second column of demo.txt
, just replace $1
with $2
Pros of AWK
Pros of C#
- Cool syntax351
- Great lambda support292
- Great generics support264
- Language integrated query (linq)210
- Extension methods180
- Automatic garbage collection94
- Properties with get/set methods89
- Backed by microsoft83
- Automatic memory management71
- Amaizing Crossplatform Support61
- High performance46
- LINQ42
- Beautiful37
- Great ecosystem of community packages with Nuget34
- Vibrant developer community26
- Great readability23
- Dead-simple asynchronous programming with async/await21
- Visual Studio - Great IDE19
- Open source17
- Productive16
- Object oriented programming paradigm15
- Strongly typed by default, dynamic typing when needed15
- Easy separation of config/application code12
- Great community11
- OOPS simplified with great syntax10
- Cool9
- Operator overloading9
- Events management using delegates8
- Good language to teach OO concepts8
- High-performance8
- Linq expressions7
- Unity7
- Coherent language backed by an extensive CLR6
- Conditional compilation6
- Top level code5
- Comprehensive platform libraries5
- Organized and clean5
- Concise syntax, productivity designed4
- Lovely3
- Statically typed2
- Interfaces1
- Far more sleek and sphisticated than other languages1
- Sophisticated overall1
- Interfaces0
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Cons of AWK
Cons of C#
- Poor x-platform GUI support15
- Closed source8
- Fast and secure7
- Requires DllImportAttribute for getting stuff from unma7