Completely agree. Even Python, which has a very low barrier to entry to "read file, possibly csv, do something" has a barrier to entry. Column projections are one-liners in AWK, and aggregates and/or some stats can be a couple of lines in an AWK script proper.
I've been replacing some ad-hoc bash scripts (nothing fancy, just a few if conditions and some formatting of outputs for a deployment) with some AWK, and it's so much handier to write (after 10 years I still can't remember if syntax) and read (it's a proper programming language) than bash
I've been replacing some ad-hoc bash scripts (nothing fancy, just a few if conditions and some formatting of outputs for a deployment) with some AWK, and it's so much handier to write (after 10 years I still can't remember if syntax) and read (it's a proper programming language) than bash
edit: wrong markdown style