While I will always be a true perl coder, I am also a physician. Some of my recent training was done outside the U.S., where our schedules were 40 hours on duty, 8 hours off. Doesn't sound too bad, until you wake up and have to start your 2nd 40 hours, then your 3rd....and then keep that going day after day. And those 8 off hours included commuting, eating, showering, and sleeping. Yeah, we never would realize we were impaired, just tired. But considering the situation - a government (i.e.charity) neurosurgical trauma center with a continuous high influx of patients (i.e. no time to sit down, or even eat) - I'm sure our judgement was ridiculously affected. But when you have a neverending line of patients with cracked heads, and you're the only one around, what else can you do but finish one and move onto the next.

The point is - for those of you that live in first-world countries, be glad you live where there are enough doctors that there are laws limiting the number of hours they can work. Same goes for pilots, truck drivers, etc.

Some of you mentioned about the concept of catching up on sleep. What is specifically even more interesting is REM sleep. Sleep research shows that if you are deprived of REM sleep (i.e. dreaming, which ironically is NOT the same as deep sleep), your brain needs to catch up specifically on REM sleep, and you will not theoretically be recovered until you do so.