I feel fucking stupid about using a custom node system at work. It is designed to generate an xml file for configuration. However, when using a node I cannot add more to the node unless the node has data. So I gotta call a function to inject useless XML into the node for it to not be empty. I literally set the internal data to <key></key>. It is stupid and I hate it. Just let me create my node hierarchy damn it!

Is this some weird data pattern I should know about? Like what does preventing adding data to an empty structure do? I have the root node. Is that not enough. Remember, this is custom node system that is probably fucking 20 years old. The previous coders did a lot of walled garden shit that I also hate. Prevents reuse of code. This code might just be more of that shit.