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Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

https://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for-compu... is a good introduction.

This blog post changed the way I think about accounting in a deep and powerful way.

I found that article to be rather obtuse and very complicated (I think it was an intellectual exercise rather than a primer), but that's my personal opinion. Definitely not the "light reading" GP wanted. A useful primer would, in my opinion, start with the accounting equation, explaining its components, and move on from there.

Is "that article" our primer of the Martin Kleppmann piece?

I was referring to the Martin Kleppmanm piece on "Accounting for Conputer Scientists". It seems like it was meant as an exercise in mapping accounting to graph theory, but somehow morphed into a go-to tutorial for accounting.

Looking at the comments on that website, it has even developed a sort of fanboyism. But IIRC, it led to some "interesting" insights when it was first discussed on HN, like "sales are liabilities".

I find the alleged impenetrability of basic accounting to be rather baffling in general.

Thanks, happy you were not referring to our document! :-)

Sales (Incomes) are clearly equity, with Expenses being contra-equity. Not sure how anyone could come to any other conclusion, but I'll read the article and it'll probably become clear. :-)

I actually did a (rough mvp) hackathon project with a friend that implemented this idea pretty literally: https://github.com/dominodes/dominodes

Thanks!

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