>>>>Ouuhh yeah, the 80ies - was burning the candle on more than 2 sides back then sometimes...
>>>
>>>Now after 33 years by the keyboard, I can say I pulled only three allnighters. First one in 1987, defragmenting the VAX (by backup-format-restore and the 2nd tape wouldn't load... until 05:45 when I just loaded it instead of the first); second in 1995, when I was writing the fast-as-hell incremental search in grid-like window in FPD2.6; third one was this year, some migration of data from one database to another - nothing too complicated, just looooong and had to be done on a friday night).
>>
>>Didn't specify the all-nighters were programming related. For those, only 2. restoring a customers database after the boss wiped it accidentally and finishing a project that was handed to me late and had the deadline pushed up to a ridiculous date.
>
>I wouldn't count other all-nighters, as there are always a few that crop up accidentally, or intentionally, like our prom night or several new year nights, or some weddings... you ain't done nothing if you don't see the sunshine in the end.

Worst case is if you happen to have the luck of Wile E Coyote and discover that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train...

I do remember those times at university after the typical "all-nighter" (as for the length of time, I'm not sure -- day and night sort'a blended into each other), my state of mind was such that I was experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations. The text on the video display display would go squidgy and go wavy, and I'd hear conversations that seem to originating from the room next door (which was empty). When I got back to the apartment (and considering my mental state, I do find it surprising that I actually did get back OK), I got a glass of water and experienced a "drinking problem" similar to that of the protagonist from the "Airplane!" film -- I stopped short of pouring the glass of water into my ear while trying to get a drink (an alarm went off in my head, noting "something is wrong" -- but couldn't quite put my finger on it). Was back to normal after a few hours of sleep.