🧭 Scenario · Make the call
The two transactions waiting forever
The situation
In a banking system, transaction T1 locks Account A and then tries to lock Account B. At the same moment, transaction T2 has already locked Account B and now tries to lock Account A. T1 won't let go of A until it gets B; T2 won't let go of B until it gets A. Neither can move, and both sit frozen — waiting on each other with no end in sight.
You haven't read about this exact system. That's the point — walk the three questions a designer asks: what's really wrong, what fixes it, and what does the fix cost?
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Diagnose
Read past the story. What's the REAL problem — not what the feature does, but what's actually going wrong?
Look past the story. What's the REAL problem here?