Most of my developer journey? Forking repos and hacking away at them until they do what I need.

AI-assisted coding hits the same vibe. The difference? Wild. Now basically any codebase I dream up already exists somewhere in the training data. Need a specific implementation? It's there. Want to modify some obscure pattern? Done.

It's like having infinite forks available instantly. The workflow feels familiar—copy, tweak, iterate—but the scale is completely different. Used to spend hours hunting for the right starter project. Now it materializes on demand.

Still the same creative process underneath. Just way faster.