Apache Airflow

Raised as a usability problem by 10 people on Hacker News over 5 years (2020–2024), in 8 threads.

People raised many different problems with Apache Airflow, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 11 complaints

Passing data between tasks is hard, with too much structure for little benefit2024-02-02
Felt clunky and heavy for simple workflows of a few Python scripts2023-11-27
Scheduled jobs run at the wrong time on first run and restarts, requiring workaround logic2023-08-02
Confusing redundant settings across environment, job, and task levels2022-08-02
Documentation is lacking, so running and using the software is frustrating2022-05-23
Installation is overly complicated with hidden dependencies, causing the user to give up2022-05-23
Hard to tell why a task isn't running when expected2022-05-23
Docs target laptop setups, so production configuration must be pieced together from third-party repos2022-02-16
Staging and prod deploys share one job, so mistakes hit prod2021-02-02
Airflow was too complicated for the IT department to install2020-05-29
Absolutely everything requires multiple clicks; interface seen as terrible2020-05-29