I've often wondered about this in the shower. Why debits and credits, when we can just make income negative and let everything sum to 0? Then you can track the balance for each account in a single field in the database.
And the answer is that "0" first entered Europe around the time they invented double-entry bookkeeping there. Negative numbers reached Europe centuries after that.
I showed the internals of a number-line-based accounting systems to an accountant once, and he was so confused by the negative incomes.
And the answer is that "0" first entered Europe around the time they invented double-entry bookkeeping there. Negative numbers reached Europe centuries after that.
I showed the internals of a number-line-based accounting systems to an accountant once, and he was so confused by the negative incomes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_number#History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping#Histo...