Lazy Bird Project

Rationale

The Lazy Bird Project was created to address a common gap in software engineering learning and evaluation: the difference between theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience with real-world system failures. Many engineering problems are well understood conceptually, yet difficult to master without direct exposure to systems where those problems actually occur.

The core idea behind this project is that a problem can only be fully understood when it can be reproduced. By reproducing a failure scenario in a controlled environment, it becomes possible to analyze its causes, observe its impact on a complete system, and apply meaningful fixes. This approach transforms abstract concepts into concrete, testable experiences.

Project Overview

The project serves as a repository of intentionally broken systems. Each system is designed to be simple, but complete, including all relevant components such as database, backend, and frontend when applicable.

Rather than isolating issues at a single layer, the goal is to demonstrate how a specific problem manifests across an entire system. For example, a non-indexed database table does not only affect query execution time; it impacts API latency, user experience, and overall system behavior. By providing a full system that exposes this issue end-to-end, the project makes these relationships explicit and easier to understand.

Each broken system is accompanied by:

• A reproducible setup

• Clear symptoms that demonstrate the problem

• Observability signals (e.g. logs, metrics, profiling)

• A well-defined fix that improves the system

The systems are intentionally small and focused, making them easy to run locally and suitable for experimentation, learning, and interview preparation.

Example Scenarios

Some examples of how problems are modeled in this project include:

• A backend service that performs sequential calls to multiple endpoints, resulting in unnecessary latency, followed by a refactor that introduces parallel execution.

• A database-backed application where missing or misused indexes cause performance degradation observable at the API and UI levels.

• Services that depend on unstable external systems, demonstrating failure propagation and the need for resilience mechanisms.

In early stages, the frontend primarily serves as a visualization layer to expose system issues clearly. As the project evolves, frontend-specific problems may also be introduced and explored.

Conclusion

The Lazy Bird Project aims to provide an accessible and practical way to study common system design and performance problems through hands-on experimentation. By offering ready-to-run broken systems, it enables engineers to move beyond theory and develop intuition through observation, diagnosis, and remediation.

This approach supports learning, teaching, and interview preparation by making complex system behavior tangible, measurable, and repeatable.