Designs these days try to hide the distinction between volatile memory ("RAM") and mass storage ("disk"), so buffers can only be more and more an alien concept

Designs these days try to hide the distinction between volatile memory ("RAM") and mass storage ("disk"), so buffers can only be more and more an alien concept for common users, if not a design defect. However, I think it doesn't really matters, because people who choose to use Emacs (or Vim) - even among developers - are much more likely to be aware of those "low level" details or understand and adapt easily. So how they are named doesn't matters more than the odd "frame" term Emacs uses instead of "Windows".