Accounting for Computer Scientists
martin.kleppmann.com
Accounting for Computer Scientists
1–10 of 79 posts
Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists
#2This i found very enlightening to read. I wonder how many accounting apps actually store their data as he describes in this article, to aid their calculations
Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists
#3As someone who both 1) checks the comments to see if I should click a link I think might be dodgy, and 2) thinks a lot of links look dodgy, including this one at first, let me give a hearty recommendation to this article. Well worth reading from start to finish.
Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists
#4"User-friendly" accounting software (such as QuickBooks) tends to obscure the fundamental simplicity of double-entry accounting.
If you want to actually understand your books, use something simple and powerful like John Wiegley's ledger:
Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists
#5OH MY GOD! I finally understand why Sales is a liability on all the balance sheets I translate! !!!
Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists
#6Having recently taken an accounting class, this is amazing.
The course I took was chock full of "because that's the way it is" explanations of terms and practices, which without fail left me feeling confused and unsatisfied. I think most people here are like me and really need deep explanations of the lower level concepts in order to be able to apply higher level concepts. Accounting coursework is absolutely horrible at this.
Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists
#7This i found very enlightening to read. I wonder how many accounting apps actually store their data as he describes in this article, to aid their calculations
off the top of my head, none. :-)
This is very easy to model in a relational db and enterprise software that does this has many more features than described here.
Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists
#8"User-friendly" accounting software (such as QuickBooks) tends to obscure the fundamental simplicity of double-entry accounting. If you want to actually understand your books, use something simple and powerful like John Wiegley's ledger: https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/
I wish I could vote this up twice.
Ledger is awesome and strips away all the crap that gets in the way of actually seeing the data.
There are also haskell and python implementations out there if that's more up your hacking alley.
Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists
#9This i found very enlightening to read. I wonder how many accounting apps actually store their data as he describes in this article, to aid their calculations
There are some further complications that make it impossible to use that exact representation without change; for instance a single transaction may involve more than two nodes; you could buy furniture and computers in one transaction and something in the system needs to represent this was one purchase, even if it is further broken apart after that. But with suitable modifications it seems like this ought to work. Whether or not it is actually done this way, I don't know... and to be honest, I doubt it, filed under "I don't need all that theory crap, I've got problems to solve!". Programmers are often quite happy to write much more complicated and redundant programs if it means not having to learn about graph theory. Not that they think of it that way. And I find it unlikely anybody started a real accounting project with "First, let's learn all about accounting and strip it down to the minimal conceptual core", rather than "Our accountants say this is how it works, so let's start putting together the matching class hierarchy", which will not produce a clean graph structure where one did not previously exist.
(And yes, theory can't be perfectly followed either, all systems will generally need some amount of dirty things, but the correct balance IMHO is definitely not 100% "pragmatic".)
Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists
#10Having recently taken an accounting class, this is amazing. The course I took was chock full of "because that's the way it is" explanations of terms and practices, which without fail left me feeling confused and unsatisfied. I think most people here are like me and really need deep explanations of the lower level concepts in order to be able to apply higher level concepts. Accounting coursework is absolutely horrible…
Agreed. It always surprises me how a subject that is very regimented in its rules and regulations can easily skip over defining all of those foundational principles (my small forays into learning accounting consists of learning through deciphering examples rather than being able to see something as clear as this page). It may be that the subject is liable to the problem of "everyday" words that carry deeper, technical meanings in the context of the subject - as in, everyone already knows what sales and accounts receivable are, right? Great, now let's move on....