Naming confusion is completely normal. Even in fields like learning human anatomy you'll learn different words for some things depending on who your teacher is,

Naming confusion is completely normal. Even in fields like learning human anatomy you'll learn different words for some things depending on who your teacher is, even though one would think that there should have been sufficient time for such issues to settle and the professionals agree on one word. But naming always is an accident of space and time - where did it happen, when did it happen, and then the path from there. Language is dynamic and a little fuzzy - in the sciences as well. You can define all you want, the problem always is other people, who choose their own definitions. It's fun - it keeps you on your toes :-) In this context, for example, I don't see a reason for a world government to impose one definition of "systems programming" worldwide by military force (this is what it would take!). Just like in almost everything in human language, you get it from the context. You should try to teach a computer to recognize human speech including the meaning, then you'll realize that almost all of it relies on context and pre-existing knowledge. "Precision" comes from the interpretation - human language communication is the nightmare of people who love functional programming, it's full of hidden state and context and active interpretation. Which is why it's so easy for this to happen: http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07 http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07 If someone wants to argue, there is no way to provide a water-tight human-language text that "Dick from the Internet" can't attack. There always is a way to mis-interpret human language.