[HN Gopher] Accounting for Computer Scientists (2011)
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       Accounting for Computer Scientists (2011)
        
       Author : tosh
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2026-01-02 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (martin.kleppmann.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (martin.kleppmann.com)
        
       | rahimnathwani wrote:
       | The last time this was posted on HN (October 2023), I posted this
       | comment which _I_ think makes it easy to understand the
       | fundamentals of accounting:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37951781
        
         | kjshsh123 wrote:
         | It's a good comment but I think to make something intuitive you
         | really need to understand why something exists and I think for
         | most people there just isn't in fact a good reason.
         | 
         | If you know it, it's easy to use, so why not? But if you don't,
         | whatever method you come up with to track account balances and
         | revenues vs. expenses is going to be useful enough. For
         | individuals not accounting for receivables, debts, depreciation
         | properly isn't likely to make a big difference.
        
           | rahimnathwani wrote:
           | This is a great point.
           | 
           | I take it for granted that people want to be able to read a
           | balance sheet and an income statement.
           | 
           | But most people don't.
        
       | tomhow wrote:
       | Previously:
       | 
       |  _Accounting for computer scientists (2011)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37940973 - Oct 2023 (50
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Accounting for Computer Scientists_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15446202 - Oct 2017 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       |  _Accounting for Computer Scientists_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2298471 - March 2011 (75
       | comments)
        
       | jimbokun wrote:
       | This is so nicely presented it's tempting me to have Claude whip
       | up an implementation.
       | 
       | Just need aome form of graphic persistence then ways of summing
       | across partitions of nodes to generate reports. And some
       | convenience methods for adding transactions.
       | 
       | Final step would be to slap a CLI or UI on top of everything.
        
       | kogasa240p wrote:
       | As someone who failed an accounting class I will definitely read
       | this.
        
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       (page generated 2026-01-02 23:00 UTC)