It's still extremely useful for those of us in industries where change comes veeerrrryyyy slooowwwly. For instance, most production servers I work with are still on Python 1.5.2 if they have Python at all - but awk, that I can depend on!
And on the other end of the spectrum, it's becoming relevant again in container ops. A random container is not likely to have a Python, Ruby or even Perl, but if it has a shell, it most certainly also has an awk. Even Alpine has one in their busybox.
