Galaxy is mostly geared toward users who are less inclined to program. Knowing how to deal with it, even if you prefer a more programmer-friendly environment, is important because of its pervasiveness. It is reassuring that an API exists to interact with Galaxy. But if you want a more programmer-friendly pipeline, there are many alternatives available.
Here, we will explore Airflow, originally from Airbnb, and currently incubating under the Apache umbrella. Airflow is somewhat at the other end of the pipeline world: it is completely subject-agnostic (actually, its development has nothing to do with bioinformatics), and it is completely geared toward programming.
