DOUBLE-ENTRY LEDGERS: THE MISSING PRIMITIVE IN MODERN SOFTWARE

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

Double-entry ledger modeling is a better fit for a lot of systems compared to the ad-hoc ledger-ish things they currently use. A double-entry ledger records the current amount or balance of a thing, a historical record of how the amount got to that amount, and where that amount came from at each step. Apps with ledger models built-in can have many things built on top of them without a lot of extra work or complexity. While there is an initial cost to introducing a ledger, that value is recouped over time.