You're a programmer, right? A lot of people on here are. You know how when starting something completely from scratch, there is so much foundational work to d

You're a programmer, right? A lot of people on here are. You know how when starting something completely from scratch, there is so much foundational work to do, making frameworks, helper libraries, classes, etc. You have to do all that stuff before your program can do much (assuming no third party libraries). Well, once your code base (or just your knowledge of existing libraries) is advanced enough, you can more easily combine pieces of it with relatively small changes to the code. You can mix and match parts and the result will be something very complex that may be based on person-years worth of work while only taking a few minutes to assemble. Pieces of code can be removed from the final product with a one line change. While the code still exists in the final product, it isn't referenced anywhere. These are a couple of analogies that help me think about it. They don't explain everything, but it should be enough to make clear that just because evolution works by "stepwise" changes that doesn't mean one step can't create huge differences.