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LeanOnSheena | 1 year ago

You're correct on all points. Some additional refining points regarding accounting concepts:

- General legers are formed by way of transactions recorded as journal entries. Journal entries are where two or more accounts from the general ledger are debited & credited such that total debits equals total credits. For example, a sale will involve a journal entry which debits cash or accounts receivable, and credits revenue.

- The concept of the debits always needing to equal credits is the most important and fundamental control in accounting. It's is the core idea around which all of double entry bookkeeping is built.

- temporally ordered Journal entries are what form a log from which a general ledger can be derived. That log of journal entries is append-only and immutable. If you make an mistake with a journal entry, you typically don't delete it, you just make another adjusting (i.e. correcting) entry.

Having a traditional background in accounting as a CPA, as a programmer I have written systems that are built around a log of temporally ordered transactions that can be used to construct state across time. To my colleagues that didn't have that background they found it interesting but very strange as an idea (led to a lot of really interesting discussions!). It was totally strange to me that they found it odd because it was the most comfortable & natural way for me to think about many problems.

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