I've had success with using VS Code for editing GDScript files, instead of using the built-in editor for Godot.
When I started using Git to track my Godot projects, I realized that all the scene files (.tscn) are just text files, and the Godot editor is a GUI for editing these text files. Scene files just store data: relationships between nodes and properties on each node. After this relevation, the whole system started to "click" for me and I started treating Godot game projects just like any other web app or mobile app that I work on.
I think you're looking for documentation on the SceneTree and "tree order". it really is a beautiful architecture when you dig into this and internalize it
I'm sorry for making you go through all that, should have looked into the documention before asking. Thank you.
Godot really is the only game making software that has this artful feeling of beauty. Portable, always consistent, small. I usually give up on software in favor of frameworks because I don't know what's happening and the documentation is too daunting compared to just making my own thing but reading how godot's made is an exception.
Unity is the same way (by default, scene and other files are stored on disk in a binary format, but you can toggle a project setting to make them text instead—which is a big help if you're using git).
When I started using Git to track my Godot projects, I realized that all the scene files (.tscn) are just text files, and the Godot editor is a GUI for editing these text files. Scene files just store data: relationships between nodes and properties on each node. After this relevation, the whole system started to "click" for me and I started treating Godot game projects just like any other web app or mobile app that I work on.