{"slug": "cron", "name": "cron", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "", "recommenders": 2, "commenters": 3, "warners": 0, "score": 2.094, "rising": -0.65, "first": "2025-12-11", "latest": "2026-07-27", "why": "I use cron in OpenBSD and it's a deterministic environment and mostly clean[0].", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I use cron in OpenBSD and it's a deterministic environment and mostly clean[0].", "icon": false, "domain": "openbsd.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://openbsd.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["cron"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 785073681, "item_id": 49067105, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49067105", "by": "egorfine", "date": "2026-07-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we have had cron perfectly working for _decades_", "excerpt": "Yes. Improvement or not, a thing not working the way one expects means one has to do more work to figure something out. And in case of pid1, this is never a time spent productively. I'm all for improvements and I love updates of software, but what systemd usually does is ideology and destruction in the name of \"new\". Like, we have had cron perfectly working for _decades_ until one man told us we were all wrong on tha", "context": "", "use_case": "job scheduling", "switched_from": "", "story": "Systemd Linger"}, {"id": 773950080, "item_id": 48371880, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48371880", "by": "skydhash", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use cron in OpenBSD and it's a deterministic environment and mostly clean[0].", "excerpt": "I use cron in OpenBSD and it's a deterministic environment and mostly clean[0]. I like that instead of having other subsystems creep in. [0]: https://man.openbsd.org/crontab.5#ENVIRONMENT", "context": "OpenBSD user", "use_case": "scheduled jobs on OpenBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "You Don't Love Systemd Timers Enough"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "skydhash", "context": "OpenBSD user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48371880", "date": "2026-06-02"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["job scheduling", "scheduled jobs on openbsd", "scheduling"], "compared": [{"slug": "systemd-timers", "name": "systemd timers", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49056351", "title": "Systemd Linger", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48367904", "title": "You Don't Love Systemd Timers Enough", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46234806", "title": "Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 785073681, "item_id": 49067105, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49067105", "by": "egorfine", "date": "2026-07-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we have had cron perfectly working for _decades_", "excerpt": "Yes. Improvement or not, a thing not working the way one expects means one has to do more work to figure something out. And in case of pid1, this is never a time spent productively. I'm all for improvements and I love updates of software, but what systemd usually does is ideology and destruction in the name of \"new\". Like, we have had cron perfectly working for _decades_ until one man told us we were all wrong on tha", "context": "", "use_case": "job scheduling", "switched_from": "", "story": "Systemd Linger"}, {"id": 773950080, "item_id": 48371880, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48371880", "by": "skydhash", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use cron in OpenBSD and it's a deterministic environment and mostly clean[0].", "excerpt": "I use cron in OpenBSD and it's a deterministic environment and mostly clean[0]. I like that instead of having other subsystems creep in. [0]: https://man.openbsd.org/crontab.5#ENVIRONMENT", "context": "OpenBSD user", "use_case": "scheduled jobs on OpenBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "You Don't Love Systemd Timers Enough"}, {"id": 739792178, "item_id": 46237011, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46237011", "by": "benrutter", "date": "2025-12-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The software I use everyday, like Cron (named after a greek god of time)", "excerpt": "> Our field deserves better than a zoo of random nouns masquerading as professional nomenclature. Clarity isn\u2019t boring, it\u2019s respect for your users\u2019 time and cognitive resources. I felt a little guilty at first, I maintain a project called Wimsey (it's a data testing library but you couldn't guess that) and at work my team regularly enjoys fun/silly names. Trying to defend myself, I was thinking about various logical", "context": "", "use_case": "scheduling", "switched_from": "", "story": "Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools"}]}