In the era of the cloud, it’s also outdated. Cron jobs are simple only if you cut your teeth on Linux and can effectively administer a server. This is an inaccessible option for many modern devs who operate far up the stack.
So it’s no surprise that we have other choices for scheduling code in 2020:
AWS Lambda + CloudWatch Events
Google Cloud Scheduler
Airflow
Kubernetes CronJobs
ECS Tasks
etc.
These options work well in their intended context: Lambda is great when you’re glueing together AWS resources. Kubernetes CronJobs or ECS Tasks are ideal when your code runs in a container. Airflow is great when you have complex dependencies between jobs, for example in data pipelines.
But when you just want to run a script on a schedule, they’re overkill. Enter Pipedream
Pipedream is an integration platform for developers. You run serverless workflows - any Node.js code - triggered by HTTP requests, timers, emails, and more. You can also use pre-built actions to connect to hundreds of APIs and apps - actions are just Node functions that perform common operations against these APIs.