swimmer963:

My favorite thing about my accounting prof is how adorably indignant he is about some of the arbitrary conventions that come with his life’s work. Some representative quotes: 

On the topic of materiality: “So at one point someone noticed employees were taking office supplies home and made a new rule that you had to request them from the clerk. To which the correct answer is ‘screw you, stop being a goddamned clown, it’s a 50¢ post-it note, IT’S NOT MATERIAL!”

On the topic of audits: “Of course, if they *were* committing fraud, you would literally never know because they could show me whatever book with whatever coding rules they wanted. One time I DID find an error in the books and I was so excited, I ran to my supervisor to show them, and they said ‘all right, good job, now you write up why it’s immaterial.’ I’ve never been so disappointed.” 

Miscellaneous:

“Land doesn’t depreciate” 

“It’s now a lesser truck than it was” 

“Is the operating cycle more or less than a year? If they’re selling fish it’d BETTER be less” 

“You know, what made the first computers commercially viable wasn’t the Internet or anything cool like you kids do these days, it was that they could do accounting” (I have no idea if this is actually true but it was cute) 

“The quick version is that the whole thing is stupid, but I’m going to teach it anyway” 

“The statement of cash flows is a pretty pointless report but GAAP made it mandatory soooo here we go” 

>>(I have no idea if this is actually true but it was cute)<<

IIRC, it depends on what you mean by “first” computer. Like, not the *first* first computers, but in the 80’s spreadsheet software was a Very Big Deal and an important factor driving computer sales.

*goes to find some stuff on Wikipedia*

Here are the Wiki entries for two of the big spreadsheet programs of the time, VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3.

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Tags:

#in which Brin is very much [a CS major about to switch to accounting] #(I originally learned the stuff above from a textbook) #I feel like the original post qualifies for the tag #I cannot believe I actually understand this #adventures in University Land #reply via reblog #unfortunately I’m too brainfoggy from a cold to study right now #I might be able to manage working on the household financial statement though #as that is somewhat more informal #illness mention #history