The 3 days it takes me to unfuck 2AM work should teach me a lesson.
But it dornt
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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dornt
I've had this run in both directions. Going through the repos a day later: "Holy hell, this solution is [utter shit || truly inspired || elegant AF || written by someone who should probably be fired]. Who wrote this? Me?! I don't remember any of this."
The compartmentalization/fugue state is real.
I love it. I'll have some fever-dream solving a problem that has had me stumped, then spend the next day fixing it up.
I’ll have some fever-dream solving a problem that has had me stumped
That's happened to me enough to almost turn me to the woo side. :D "Answers Come In Dreams."
"What's software development like?" "Well, like the shamans of old, we work ourselves into a fugue state to hallucinate esoteric solutions to unsolvable problems, then kick it to junior scribes to record and implement."
And you've rewritten it by 11 am, wondering why you didn't go sleep at a decent hour.
happens to me when i'm drunk; but not too drunk. lol
This graph is also true for bowling.
I never knew there was an xkcd comic for this. I shall be saving this link for my next late night drinking development session.
of course there's an xkcd comic of ti. lol
ti
is my keyboard dyslexia significant somehow? lol
6 hours later? Get some fucking sleep, code will be better.
It's all a matter of perspective
Memories of college days gone by.
Just get your rest folks. Work isn't going to give you a medal for "most late nights" or "closest flirtation with burnout". If your boss hasn't allocated enough resources to reach the goal timeline, you tell them as soon as you realize and then it's their problem.
Sleep is also when your brain finally goes "Hey why didn't you do this obvious solution?"
See also talking in the shower as a debugging method.
Yeah, if you break your back to get it sorted they just assume they allocated enough resources and will do it again.
It's super hard to let things fail sometimes but in some organizations it's the only actual signal they can respond to.
Nowadays they reply with You must use AI to be more productive.
The senior dev on my team does this on a daily basis.
Then the rest of the team gets confused how to use his code because he's buried it in a dozen layers of abstractions.
The senior dev... buried it in a dozen layers of abstractions.
That is not a senior dev. That's junior level work cosplaying as clever senior work.
Yes and no.
It is absolutely damaging. But the dude knows way more about the tech we use than anybody else on the team. He is autistic as fuck, and his hyperfixation is the Microsoft tech stack.
He spends hours at home watching tutorials because he legit thinks it's fun.
He routinely shows up to work and goes "hey, did you see the new [version of Microsoft package/tool] they finally fixed [thing]!"
And every time I'm just like "no. I did not see that".
He has by far the most experience and knowledge, but he just misuses it like crazy.
Shame he didn't spend time reading up on SOLID principles, clean code, refactoring and TDD. Sounds like Jr parading as a senior. Product nerd != good developer.
Most seniors got burned so much, they refuse to build complex unsupportable stuff. KISS is king with top devs.
Is that the He-man castle from the 80s?
Fisher price great adventures castle toy from the 90s
I loved that castle. I think the remains of it lie in my parents attic to this day.
Every child care center and baby sitter near me eventually had one or two of these.
I'm not sure I ever encountered one with the actual figures though. You were lucky if the canon ball was still with it.
The game for this bad boy went hard