[liquidise]

This is not an argument against cron. It is a demonstration of people not abstracting code. One of the thousands i've come across.

Take all of the features he mentions, and abstract the to a launch_from_cron.sh file. Make that file accept a script path as an argument and viola! All of the safety added to cron without the need for code duplication or these massive overhead solutions listed in these comments.

[weaksauce]

did you not see the cron script at the end of the article? the author does exactly this.