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You are missing out. As a former data engineer/current SRE, I spend my entire day with VSCode/Python/Notebooks/CoPilot banging out python code - but whenever

You are missing out. As a former data engineer/current SRE, I spend my entire day with VSCode/Python/Notebooks/CoPilot banging out python code - but whenever I need to do a complex analysis of a semistructured text file in < 60 seconds, awk is my twitch reflex tool. It can trivially do state transition based on patterns in the file, as well as populate hashes from one file and use them in analysis of the next file in just a few characters. Awk's claim to fame in my world is that it's cognitive activation energy for anyone who has taken the 3-4 hours to learn the language from start to finish (and that's the awesome thing about the language - it really is about 3 hours of concentrated attention) - is essentially nil. You see a bunch of ugly not really structured text 500 MB files that you can't pull into pandas, or easily parse into python dicts? No problem - awk will tear through them for you and get the information you want in < 60 seconds, including the time you took to write your (almostl always single line) of code. That's Awk's sweet spot.

getpost 3y ago
Point taken. I have a Python program that is an elemental version of awk, and I use that for the odd task. I can modify it if needed and I have the entire Python library to help me. Is the text Unicode? HTML? These little details matter. I'm not complaining that someone banged out awk (speaking figuratively) on a Friday afternoon to do something and not have to stay after work. Excellent! My complaint is that the failure to address technical debt has negatively affected the productivity of millions, if not tens of millions, of people, often working under pressure, for DECADES.
- ghshephard 3y ago
  I'm not sure what technical debt you are referring to. Awk is designed to do one very simple job, and it does so using a language that I can usually teach to new SREs in < 2 Hours with 9-10 follow up tasks that drill in their understanding. It's benefited from extraordinarily enlightened stewardship, kept it's minimalism and strengths, and will finally get a key enhancement (UTF-8 support). The first edition manual is probably the greatest example I've ever seen of technical writing as well.
classichasclass 3y ago
In general Perl fits that niche for me better, but sometimes awk is what you have.

getpost 3y ago

Point taken. I have a Python program that is an elemental version of awk, and I use that for the odd task. I can modify it if needed and I have the entire Python library to help me. Is the text Unicode? HTML? These little details matter. I'm not complaining that someone banged out awk (speaking figuratively) on a Friday afternoon to do something and not have to stay after work. Excellent! My complaint is that the failure to address technical debt has negatively affected the productivity of millions, if not tens of millions, of people, often working under pressure, for DECADES.

ghshephard 3y ago
I'm not sure what technical debt you are referring to. Awk is designed to do one very simple job, and it does so using a language that I can usually teach to new SREs in < 2 Hours with 9-10 follow up tasks that drill in their understanding. It's benefited from extraordinarily enlightened stewardship, kept it's minimalism and strengths, and will finally get a key enhancement (UTF-8 support). The first edition manual is probably the greatest example I've ever seen of technical writing as well.

classichasclass 3y ago

In general Perl fits that niche for me better, but sometimes awk is what you have.