[csydas]

> awk isn't readable.

I mean, russian is also unreadable, until you know how to read it.

awk's power for me isn't the LOC needed to accomplish a task, its power is that I can express the business logic I need very easily and very quickly, and the resulting code is really fast. I am by no means great with awk, but I can go months without touching awk, encounter some problem where awk shines, and in a few minutes or less I have exactly what I need.

you can learn to be extremely productive with awk in a few hours and it's very comforting to have this in your toolset moving forward. Essential? Probably not, but I like that I don't need to break my thought process when working with awk because it's just so natural to express what I want awk to do that I don't really "think" about writing awk, I just write it.