Comment by nlitened
2 years ago
> That's exactly right -- you don't need to. The problem is that people do use this terminology, and they use it in a way that conflicts with common usage
I used to think that way, then I understood this thinking is the exact opposite of what’s happening.
Hundred million people on earth know how to work with debit and credit exactly as it has been written in accounting books for hundreds of years. When you need to expand your accounting department, you go and hire a person who understands things exactly the same way as your current accountants, can pick up their work, they can communicate effectively. As a CEO, you are spared of teaching every new junior accountant your own flavor of first-principles accounting, you don’t need to write your custom accounting software, and convert your company’s books for tax authorities and outside auditors who are not familiar with your system.
Same with music notation. Same with Java language. Same with every other piece of human knowledge.
That's because people are trained into the system.
If you started teaching it another way, eventually that other way would be the norm.
It should be tangibly 10x—100x better than what's already out there for people to switch. If you make something marginally better (and by default anything unknown is much worse than what everybody knows already), nobody will bother.
> Java language
That's actually a pretty good analogy. There is a lot in Java that could be improved too.