Sure, you have to learn the system's particulars and both systems have corner cases that seem to pop up in even the simplest of uses

...however, cronjobs are a single entry in a single application. Systemd is a system backbone. Using it for everything when you know how to use it is straightforward. Almost no one knows how to use it.

Not as many people know how to use it because they keep hearing this bashing.

But for a beginner systemd is quite accessible (if you don’t come at it with init.d baggage), and its advanced features almost always end up being relevant for its basic tasks.

I had to figure it out from scratch on a server running live, and I’m alive to tell the tale.

hahahaha good joke, right? I'm not really arguing that systemd is too complex but more so nitpicking your use of 'beginner'. If you believe systemd is accessible to a beginner...we're working from 2 very different pictures of what a novice computer user or even a novice programmer is capable of.

Crontab is an application installed by default on most linux flavors and has a multi-decade history of simplistic and complex usecases.

Systemd is the building blocks of the entire operating system. How in the world is that beginner accessible?

Do you want to setup a daemon that starts when a specific network interface is online? This is infinitely easier in systemd.

Defining a unit file (a daemon) is a matter of a trivial definition file and a couple of commands, can’t get more accessible than that. We’re still talking Linux distro users, not your run of the mill consumer of course.

Do you want to master using all features that systemd has to offer? There’s obviously a learning curve.

I’m not arguing in favor of systemd _over_ crontab, but there’s no need to bash on systemd which is a perfectly fine piece of software that does what it says (whether it does too much is a different topic).

Cron expressions are used in many software components way beyond cron daemons.

Another systemd "change for change's sake" argument.