1972 Unix V2 "Beta" Resurrected

There is LOADS of gray area, overlap, and room for one's own philosophical interpretation... But typically simulators attempt to reproduce the details of how a particular machine worked for academic or engineering purposes, while emulators are concerned mainly with only getting the desired output. (Everything else being an implementation detail.)

E.g. since the MAME project considers itself living documentation of arcade hardware, it would be more properly classified as a simulator. While the goal of most other video game emulators is just to play the games.

Not the case at all. Tons of emulators are near 100% accurate.

Huh? I didn't mention anything about accuracy. And "accuracy" (an overloaded and ill-defined term on its own) doesn't have anything to do with the differences between simulators and emulators.

I don't want to offend you , but this has made me even wonder more what the difference is.

It just feels that one is emulator if its philosophy is "it just works" and simulator if "well sit down kids I am going to give you proper documentation and how it was built back in my days"

but I wonder what that means for programs themselves...

I wonder if simulator==emulator is more truer than what javascript true conditions allow.

exactly. makes you wonder , is it all just philosophical.

Calling the same thing a different name.

Irrelevant to the concept being expressed, and does not invalidate.

The goals merely overlap, which is obvious. Equally obviously, if two goals are similar, then the implimentations of some way to attain those goals may equally have some overlap, maybe even a lot of overlap. And yet the goals are different, and it is useful to have words that express aspects of things that aren't apparent from merely the final object.

A decorative brick and a structural brick may both be the same physical brick, yet if the goals are different then any similarity in the implimentation is just a coincidense. It would not be true to say that the definition of a decorative brick includes the materials and manufacturing steps and final physical properties of a structural brick. The definition of a decorative brick is to create a certain appearance, by any means you want, and it just so happens that maybe the simplest way to make a wall that looks like a brick wall, is to build an actual brick wall.

If only they had tried to make it clear that there is overlap and the definitions are grey and fuzzy and open to personal philosophic interpretation and the one thing can often look and smell and taste almost the same as the other thing, if only they had said anything at all about that, it might have headed off such a pointless confusion...

It's fuzzy.