Decision 033
Queue versus cron for background work
Context
Background processing is often bolted on without matching the failure model.
Decision
Cron for predictable schedules and idempotent batch work. Queues for decoupled event processing with retry/backoff semantics.
Trade-offs
Cron is operationally simple on shared hosting. Queues are more robust for spikes but may require infrastructure not available in every environment.
When I would reconsider
On constrained hosting, prefer cron-invoked PHP workers with idempotent jobs over introducing persistent queue infrastructure.