Accounting for Computer Scientists • Hacker News Board

Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists

#11

Post by philips » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 9:01 PM UTC

zdw wrote: post #8

tc wrote: post #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: 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.

The haskell implementation has a web command that presents a nice html page with summaries of every account along with the ability to filter by date or account. It is a nice way of quickly analyzing the current state of affairs.

Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists

#12

Post by archgoon » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 9:04 PM UTC

Interesting. One of the side effects of having the zero sum rule for all transactions means that graphs can be superimposed on each other and also get a valid balance-sheet graph. Cool! Are loops possible? What do they mean?

Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists

#13

Post by Adaptive » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 9:04 PM UTC

tc wrote: post #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: https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/

I recently became aware of ledger when Wiegley was interview on the floss podcast:

http://castroller.com/Podcasts/FlossWeekly/2140974-FLOSS%20W...

Worth a listen both from a general open source development perspective as well as for an overview of the system itself.

Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists

#14

Post by shawnee_ » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 9:08 PM UTC

If you’re a real accountant reading this, please forgive my simplifications; if you spot any mistakes, please let me know.

There is one pretty important section of the P&L / Balance Sheet that's missing . . . taxes.

On that note, I am hosting a tax workshop on 3/15 @ Hacker Dojo in Mtn. View (very close to YC's office)

http://www.transparentaccounting.org/self-employment

Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists

#15

Post by Duff » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 9:09 PM UTC

jcromartie wrote: post #6

Having 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…

Accounting courses are horrific, but in fairness they try to get you up to speed on the basics before diving into the detail.

A typical CSI 101 course is often like this -- you learn about operators, etc without understanding how things actually work until later.

Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists

#16

Post by farnja » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 9:10 PM UTC

Loved this post. Starts to convince people that Accounting really can be beautiful, in many of the same ways that software can be beautiful. It does tend to get overrun with terminology, edge cases, and other necessary issues given the consequences of ambiguity, but at the lowest level, accounting is just telling a story. Wonderful post!

Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists

#17

Post by billswift » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 9:15 PM UTC

David Friedman wrote a very short post 5 years ago on accounting:

"I have been teaching a new course that includes two weeks explaining accounting to law students. To do so, I first had to understand it myself. I think I now do, and in the hope that the information might be useful to others ... ."

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-acc...

Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists

#18

Post by seanstickle » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 9:15 PM UTC

If you have a formal systems bent, as I do, you might enjoy "Algebraic Models for Accounting Systems" (http://www.amazon.com/Algebraic-Accounting-Systems-Salvador-...).

"This book describes the construction of algebraic models which represent the operations of the double entry accounting system. It gives a novel, comprehensive, proof based treatment of the topic, using such concepts from abstract algebra as automata, digraphs, monoids and quotient structures."

Think of it as a primer for building yourself an exceedingly awesome and utterly-unnecessary Haskell-based QuickBooks.

Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists

#19

Post by jpadkins » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 9:26 PM UTC

archgoon wrote: post #12

Interesting. One of the side effects of having the zero sum rule for all transactions means that graphs can be superimposed on each other and also get a valid balance-sheet graph. Cool! Are loops possible? What do they mean?

loops represent the economy. Other than new currency from the Federal Reserve or Treasury, or physical dollar media being destroyed, its a closed loop system.

Re: Accounting for Computer Scientists

#20

Post by mixmax » Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 9:46 PM UTC

It's always enlightening when someone manages to explain a somewhat complicated subject in terms of an abstraction that the audience understands. This is a great example of that.

And it works the other way too.

When you've read this article and understood it you wil know how to explain graph theory to an accountant - "see it's actually not that hard, it's just like bookkeeping"