I've been thinking about learning #n8n so I can automate a few things in my life. I keep hearing how cool it is. After poking around a bit, I think #Airflow is a better fit for me. It's way more flexible (because Python) and scalable.
I think people misunderstand what Airflow really is. It's not a data pipelining tool. It's a task orchestrator.
People are often put off by Airflow's learning curve - you can do quite a lot with a little Airflow knowledge - if you are dedicated and focus on the right things, you can build solid skills quickly.
People are also put off by the price of managed Airflow services. You can self-host it on the cheap quite easily using `airflow standalone`.
This isn't recommended for production workloads but I think it's probably fine for personal workloads, especially if you dont need a whole lot of different tasks running at exactly the same time (which I don't right now).
Another benefit of Airflow is that it is a serious tool - you can do enterprise-scale things with it. So it's used a lot in industry. Some might argue against using enterprise-ready tech to solve personal problems, but there are many tools, for example #Python, that are genuinely useful at very different scales.
This also means that there is a pretty solid Airflow job market. So if you are interested in employability it could be worth looking into.
N8n wins on a few fronts though - Airflow doesn't handle external triggers, while n8n has first-class webhook support (there are workarounds though). And n8n has a fun community that shares different workflows and tools. They are designed for different audiences.
Please challenge me on this! If you think low code tools (n8n or similar) are a better fit for Python developers I'd love to hear about your experience.
If you have #python experience and you've been looking into using n8n or similar, I think it's worth taking Airflow for a spin. Let me know how it goes :)
