My laptop died 90 minutes before a client demo. Git was not the part that saved me

My laptop stopped charging about 90 mins before a client demo. At first I wasn’t too worried. The code was in Git, so technically nothing was lost. Then I remembered how long it had taken me to get the project running locally..It needed postgre sql, redis, two workers, a very specific node version and a database snapshot that took forever to import. Having the code was useful. Rebuilding the actual working environment before the call was not happening. A month earlier, I’d moved the development setup to a smallserverspace vmbcse running the whole stack locally made my laptop sound like it was preparing for takeoff. That decision finally paid off. I borrowed an old chromebook, connected to the vm, made the last change and ran the demo from the same environment I’d been using all week. The client never knew anything had happened. My expensive laptop spent the meeting charging unsuccessfully in the corner while a Chromebook old enough for middle school handled the actual work.

I still replaced the laptop. I just no longer confuse having my code backed up with being able to continue working.