title: Distributed task queues (Ex. Celery) vs crontab scripts
body: <p>I'm having trouble understanding the purpose of 'distributed task queues'. For example, python's <a href="http://www.celeryproject.org/" rel="noreferrer">celery library</a>. </p>
  
  <p>I know that in celery, the python framework, you can set timed windows for functions to get executed. However, that can also be easily done in a linux crontab directed at a python script. </p>
  
  <p>And as far as I know, and shown from my own django-celery webapps, celery consumes much more RAM memory than just setting up a raw crontab. Few hundred MB difference for a relatively small app.</p>
  
  <p>Can someone please help me with this distinction? Perhaps a high level explanation of how task queues / crontabs work in general would be nice also.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you.</p>