'0xcde4c3db makes a good point about it making the flow of value clear in the transaction, but the transaction view is already the easy thing to interpret. The value (heh) of bookkeeping is when those flows are aggregated, and the meaning of those aggregations is (admittedly only somewhat) obscured when optimizing for clarifying flows in single transactions.
Charging a credit card to make it more negative does match our intuition of how it affects our overall financial position, but that's due to serendipity. What does it mean that expenses are normally positive, is that a good thing then? Or that my paycheck account is negative?
In the end it's a nit, a small thing I mostly ignore. I just think that part of the complexity it tries to eliminate is essential, with results like negative revenues. It's a leaky abstraction.
'0xcde4c3db makes a good point about it making the flow of value clear in the transaction, but the transaction view is already the easy thing to interpret. The value (heh) of bookkeeping is when those flows are aggregated, and the meaning of those aggregations is (admittedly only somewhat) obscured when optimizing for clarifying flows in single transactions.
Charging a credit card to make it more negative does match our intuition of how it affects our overall financial position, but that's due to serendipity. What does it mean that expenses are normally positive, is that a good thing then? Or that my paycheck account is negative?
In the end it's a nit, a small thing I mostly ignore. I just think that part of the complexity it tries to eliminate is essential, with results like negative revenues. It's a leaky abstraction.