In my UNIX learning history I skipped straight from sed to perl and didn't use awk. By the time I had switched to python, awk sounded awfully "old" to me.

I went back recently and read more on it and now I understand: it was an excellent interpreted programming language that gave semiskilled programmers some things C didn't, like associative arrays, all nicely packaged within the UNIX frame of mind. In an alternative universe, perhaps awk, instead of perl and then python, would become the scripting language of choice.