[pcwalton]

I learned awk a while back, thinking along the same lines, and decided that there's a reason why everyone uses Python/Ruby/etc. nowadays when I learned that arguments and locals are the same thing. Even the designers of awk realize now that this was a mistake, as I recall. The rule of least power is a good guideline, but awk unfortunately has basic design mistakes that modern languages correct.

[gnubison]

If you’re writing the kind of script that should be written in Awk, then the upsides will far outweigh that downside. Awk is not designed for 500-line, 50-function scripts, it’s designed for 50-line, 1- or 2- function scripts.