Tbf, it probably has occurred to them, but then they ridicule the thought even if it derives from their own head. The group-think mindset can be brutal: they are going to be unhealthy for life and then die sooner, but you can’t even tell them there is any other way, nor does actively showing it work either:-(. Stay strong and cling to the better way!:-)
awk is awesome! I love it, and I do not regret learning how to use it.
That said, my workflow invariably always shifts from starting with awk to do something simply with a tiny one-liner, to then doing that with perl or python, and sometimes even creating a file to make the by-now multi-line scripts more easily readable.
I do not recommend starting with awk, if you do not know other languages already such as Python.