Manipulate window size in linux via compiled code?

Question

I wrote a couple of scripts to maximize a window to half the size of the screen (to make it easy to place windows side-by-side) using xrandr, grep, and wmctrl as follows:

#!/bin/bash

w=`xrandr 2> /dev/null | grep '*' | grep -Po '\d+(?=x)'`
h=`xrandr 2> /dev/null | grep '*' | grep -Po '(?<=x)\d+'`
wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -b remove,maximized_horz,maximized,vert
wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -e 0,0,0,$((w / 2)),$h

Is there a way to do this more natively? The script works well on my desktop, but on my laptop there's a half-second lag that is kind of annoying.