If I get credited or I use a credit card money came from nowhere, woohoo. If I have a debit well that sounds like debt and my money decreased, boo.
I get that actually there's a good reason for the names but a field that doggedly sticks to non intuitive jargon that runs counter to every usage yet encountered for outsiders could do with some different non-overloaded terms.
I disagree. Discussions like this on HN always invite someone to say "Look, it's super simple. Credits are just... and debits are just ...". Then a reply saying "You have it backwards. Look, it's simple! Credits are just..."
I would be perfectly happy to ditch those terms forever.
I think a far more intuitive system is use negative numbers with a symmetrical accounting equation:
Assets - Liabilities = Income - Expense
- Do I have more or less assets?
- Do I owe more or less liabilities?
- Did I make more of less profits?
- Did I make more or less losses?
You can then use the accounting equation to check your reasoning. I go more into it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40021375
I don't understand how describing debit/credit (accounting jargon) in layman's terms smacks of jargon, but maybe that is because I am a layman =)
As someone with no accounting background, credit/debt described as "money go in, money go out" seems like a good enough explanation in the context of this post.
Do the "true" definitions of credit/debit differ from that in a meaningful way here?
> A debit decreases assets or increases liabilities, while a credit increases assets or decreases liabilities. [1]
> A debit is always used to increase the balance of an asset account, and the cash account is an asset account. [2]
[1] https://xendoo.com/blog/debits-and-credits/ [2] https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/small-business/accounting/ar...
It's not just that they're a bit confusing, it's that those words serve exactly one purpose, which is to disambiguate the exact thing that people find confusing about them.
The biggest indicator of their failure is that they are always explained in terms of something clearer, and the reverse it not true. No-one says: "I don't understand what 'we received $50' means, can you explain that in terms of credits and debits?"