When at some point I decided to learn AWK better, I was surprised to find that it had some very Perl-ish features, like `print` is the same as `print $0` or `if(/abc/){}` as shorthand for `if($0 ~ /abc/){}`, etc. Later I learned that Perl was designed as an AWK-on-steroids by Larry Wall.
No doubt Perl is much more powerful than AWK. But from other side it’s astonishing that such succinct and clear language as AWK was turned into a monstrosity called Perl.
Therefore, for me when it goes to text processing/manipulation I prefer AWK much better than Perl. Cleaner syntax, better portability, absolute minimalism. Now, thanks to GoAWK [0] CSV-processing with AWK is a piece of cake too.
I personally see no reason nowadays for me to write any Perl code, but I’m totally fine to use the software written in it.