Different ways to display title

I’m new to WordPress and I’m still learning from tutorials, but I’m confused with their conflicted ways. What the difference between these two ways to make the title a link:

<h1>
    <a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/239292/<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
    <?php the_title(); ?>
    </a>
</h1>

and

<?php the_title(sprintf(
            '<h1><a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/239292/%s">',
            esc_url(get_permalink())),
            '</a></h1>');
?>

Is it a performance issue? or a security? or what?

thanks.

Edit:

I know that the function the_permalink() has embedded esc_url functionality while get_permalink doesn’t. So in my case, is there still any difference?

The second form can be handy too:

• We can also use the third parameter:

  the_title( $before, $after, $echo ); 
  

  to assign the title to a variable.

  Here’s an example:

  $title = the_title( '<h1 class="entry-title">', '</h1>', false );
  

• This can also help reducing the use of <?php ?> delimiters.

  Here’s an example from the Twenty Fifteen theme

   if ( is_single() ) :
       the_title( '<h1 class="entry-title">', '</h1>' );
   else :
       the_title( sprintf( '<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/239292/%s" rel="bookmark">', esc_url( get_permalink() ) ), '</a></h2>' );
   endif;
  

  but there are of course various ways to get rid of such if/else parts.

  Here’s an alternative form for comparison:

  <?php if( is_single() ) : ?>
      <h1 class="entry-title"><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
  <?php else : ?>
      <h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/239292/<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
  <?php endif; ?>