I've done this for single-use pipelines when built up because the nature of the data is unfamiliar. It usually starts with

   cat file | less

and then

   cat file | grep bar | less

and then

   cat file | grep bar | awk '{ print $1 }' | less

and so on.

But if it's going to be used more than once then it does seem odd to have the unnecessary commands. Maybe "advanced" awk (beyond print $1) is unknown to people?