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Comment by mrkeen | Hacker News Reader

> Changing Debit/Credit to Incoming/Outgoing smacks of jargon and will cause confusion.

I disagree. Discussions like this on HN always invite someone to say "Look, it's super simple. Credits are just... and debits are just ...". Then a reply saying "You have it backwards. Look, it's simple! Credits are just..."

I would be perfectly happy to ditch those terms forever.

View on HN

Plenty of downvotes, and yet, after writing this prediction, this thread is indeed filled with people all defining the terms 'Credit' and 'Debit' at one another. :D

Yup I think it’s best to leave credits and debits behind. We can use more than 2 bits these days.

I think a far more intuitive system is use negative numbers with a symmetrical accounting equation:

  Assets - Liabilities = Income - Expense

Then you always think in terms of:

- Do I have more or less assets?

- Do I owe more or less liabilities?

- Did I make more of less profits?

- Did I make more or less losses?

You can then use the accounting equation to check your reasoning. I go more into it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40021375

Reply on news.ycombinator.com