A guide to Deno.cron

The article explores how the legacy UNIX cron command, used since the 1970s for scheduling tasks, is adapted for modern technology through Deno, an open-source runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript. It guides readers on installing Deno and using its cron package to create scheduled tasks, emphasizing the simplicity and expressiveness of using JavaScript objects for task scheduling compared to traditional crontab strings. Examples provided in the text demonstrate scheduling tasks at specific intervals and handling scenarios where task executions overlap, a situation where Deno skips the execution of overlapping tasks. It also illustrates the use of a backoff schedule to retry failed tasks at incrementally longer intervals, and discusses how Deno Deploy, a platform for serverless JavaScript applications, ensures tasks are executed at least once per interval, even if failures occur. The article concludes by highlighting Deno.cron's capabilities for server-side applications, such as recalculating data, retrying API calls, and updating dashboards.