As a kid I had a multitude of "from zero" projects. There was no Internet. No SO. There were reference books and manuals but none of those really let you just copy paste your project. Later on I worked in environments with many smaller projects that again I took on from zero and worked on for years.

Boy do I miss those days now that I work for larger companies and with larger teams where the opportunity to do that is pretty rare. Give me a blank slate all day for any project.