No you don't. There is no reason to switch. I've written many full-blown programs in AWK and I see no reason to switch them to another language -- they're fast,

No you don't. There is no reason to switch. I've written many full-blown programs in AWK and I see no reason to switch them to another language -- they're fast, portable and readable, with tiny memory requirements. It all comes down to mastery: someone who's mastered AWK will have no issues with a large AWK program and therefore will feel no urge to translate that program to another language. Large AWK programs are easy to maintain because the syntax is so small that the code is always intrinsically understandable.