Yes. What's happening is that we're essentially using the correct internal representation of the software externally.
Note that if the accounts are coerced to be in one of the five types (or otherwise have some such attribute to classify them), there's a trivial way to convert inputs and outputs to conform to the traditional debits/credits representation. On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 6:30 AM, Mark Alexander <[email protected]> wrote: > Excerpts from Rick F's message of 2015-03-16 02:07:33 -0400: > > So along comes Ledger, written by a computer scientist, not an > > accountant. Computer scientists don't have anything against > > subtraction since it's really just 2's complement addition, and they > > hate added complexity, so they do away with credits and debits > > entirely by just moving everything to one side of the equation. > > Debits+-Debits=0. > > This is the reason why I find Ledger's model much simpler than the > classic double entry accounting model. When I look at descriptions of > the latter, e.g., the article on Wikipedia, I get terribly confused > about which types of accounts get bigger or smaller when you credit or > debit them. I finally realized that my confusion about the seemingly > unnecessary complication stems from accountants' hatred of negative > numbers. > > But I find negative numbers so much easier to understand. All I have > to know about ledger is that in a transaction, money added to an > account (or accounts) has to be subtracted from another account (or > accounts). Then, for example, I can treat credit cards and checking > accounts the same way: when I take money from them, their balances are > reduced. The difference is that a credit card starts with a zero > balance and goes negative when I take money from it; the checking > account starts with a positive balance, and (if I'm doing things > frugally) stays positive (though reduced) when I take money from it. > > Accountants would probably hate this model of things, but it works for me. > > -- > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ledger" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ledger" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
