It’s 3:00 AM. The glow of VS Code reflects off my hollow, sleep-deprived eyes. Everyone else is dreaming. I’m debugging. Alone. Or so I thought.

That’s when he shows up.

Me.
But from like, two hours ago.
Energized, overconfident, and apparently fluent in whatever ancient dialect I used to name these variables.

⸻

I’ve always hated pair programming.
Too many opinions. Too much talking. Too many people noticing I don’t actually know how promises work under the hood. But solo devving at night? That’s when I truly shine—like a gremlin with Git access and no supervision.

Except now I’m in a full-on split-brain mode:

  • 3AM Me is cautious, tired, and deeply mistrustful of the code.
  • 1AM Me was a cowboy with a text editor and a dream.

Together? We’re unstoppable.
Unstoppably bad.

⸻

Scene 1: “Why Would I Write This?”

I stare at a function I clearly wrote less than two hours ago.
It has five parameters. One is named thing. Another is dataThing.
There’s a comment above it that just says:

// lol this works i think

I reach for the keyboard like a detective reaching for a weapon. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but it’s gonna be violent.

⸻

Scene 2: “Git Blame? Oh, It’s Me.”

I open git blame hoping to find a scapegoat.
My name. Line after line.
Me, me, me.
I’m the villain of this story.

Somewhere in the distance, a rubber duck quacks disapprovingly.

⸻

Scene 3: “Sleep Is a Dependency”

Sleep deprivation is the real senior engineer on this project.
Every time I think I’ve fixed the bug, three new ones emerge—like some sort of Jira-fueled hydra.
At one point, I comment out a chunk of code and whisper “We never speak of this again.”

I’m not writing code anymore. I’m making threats in a domain-specific language.

⸻

Scene 4: “Breakthrough or Breakdown?”

Then suddenly… it works.

I don’t know how.
I don’t know why.
All I know is: the bug is gone, the tests pass, and production hasn’t exploded (yet). I sit back, staring at the monitor like I just defused a bomb using only a toothpick and Stack Overflow.

Me-from-an-hour-ago winks.

⸻

The Aftermath

At 10AM the next day, I open the repo and see a commit titled:
fix: it do be working now tho
Inside, the code looks like it was written by someone having an existential crisis in real-time. Because it was.

I leave it untouched. It’s perfect.
It’s a timestamp of my descent into madness—and my quiet, glorious return.

⸻

Moral of the story?
Don’t code at 3AM. But if you do, at least bring snacks, a hoodie, and prepare for the most intense, cinematic pair programming session of your life—with the only dev you can never escape: yourself.