The reason my so-called code makes no sense to you is because I'm coming at it from the standpoint of: "let's make this set of nodes I see in the shader tree". At the end of the day, that exercise means nothing, because I haven't really built a shader based on maths: I built it on parroting what I see in a shader tree.

Useless.

Back to the drawing board: that method of discovery isn't going to work!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks