Hey Eric!
Awesome observations, and Kudos for sharing your thoughts.
Nodes can seem like wizardry and be quite daunting when starting to learn them. It’s one of those areas that can take many, many hours of practice, and a lot of patience.
Using the Node Wrangler add-on, specifically the SHIFT + CTRL + Click combo on any node in the node tree to view the output to that point is very useful to start to understand what and how nodes work.
Keep Practicing, Keep Blending! 🍪
