Splitters make more sense to me since different things should be categorized differently.
However, I believe a major problem in modern computing is when the splitter becomes an "abstraction-splitter."
For example, take the mouse. The mouse is used to control the mouse cursor, and that's very easy to understand. But we also have other devices that can control the mouse cursor, such as the stylus and touchscreen devices.
A lumper would just say that all these types of devices are "mouses" since they behave the same way mouses do, while a splitter would come up with some stupid term like "pointing devices" and then further split it into "precise pointing devices" and "coarse pointing devices" ensuring that nobody has absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
As modern hardware and software keeps getting built on piles and piles of abstractions, I feel this problem keeps getting worse.
Doesn't it make sense to use words that mean what you're using them to mean?
By your logic I could use the term "apple" to describe apples, oranges, limes, and all other fruit because they all behave in much the same ways that apples do. But that's silly because there are differences between apples and oranges [citation needed]. If you want to describe both apples and oranges, the word for that is "fruit", not "apple".
Using a touchscreen is less precise than using a mouse. If the user is using a touchscreen, buttons need to be bigger to accommodate for the user's lack of input precision. So doesn't it make sense to distinguish between mice and touchscreens? If all you care about is "thing that acts like a mouse", the word for that is "pointing device", not "mouse".
The point is that it's simpler to understand what something is by analogy (a touchscreen is a mouse) than by abstraction (a mouse is a pointing device; a touchscreen is also a pointing device), since you need a third, abstracting concept to do the latter.
Splitters make more sense to me since different things should be categorized differently.
However, I believe a major problem in modern computing is when the splitter becomes an "abstraction-splitter."
For example, take the mouse. The mouse is used to control the mouse cursor, and that's very easy to understand. But we also have other devices that can control the mouse cursor, such as the stylus and touchscreen devices.
A lumper would just say that all these types of devices are "mouses" since they behave the same way mouses do, while a splitter would come up with some stupid term like "pointing devices" and then further split it into "precise pointing devices" and "coarse pointing devices" ensuring that nobody has absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
As modern hardware and software keeps getting built on piles and piles of abstractions, I feel this problem keeps getting worse.