Why do every explanation has to involve some arbitrary logic? I'm confused enough seeing "credit" and "debit", which is a standard accounting doublespeak, and this "Yin", "Yang" makes even less sense.
It boils down to only one principle: "Every transaction must balance". This is similar to the base natural law of energy conservation. There's no free money. Money going to one account has to come from somewhere.
The rest is convention, what we call income/revenue, expense, liability and equity, and how to structure our accounts and reports. It's all nicely explained in http://ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html
Give ledger-cli a try. It has superb manual, and after reading it I stopped being cofused by bookkeeping terminology used elsewhere.
People who are new to book-keeping typically already have a mental model of it from bank statements. The salary is "credited", and withdrawals are debits. This notion muddles things up.
"Every transaction must balance" is a succinct explanation, but it is unfortunately even one more level abstract for someone not exposed to the very idea of book-keeping. The hope is that showing a few entries without being muddled in what is debit and what is credit territory, and how they relate to each other will trigger the aha moment a little sooner.
I guess the bank account thing would be confusing initially, but it really just needs to be explicitly stated upfront that the bank account is drawn up from the perspective of the bank, and your accounts are literally the inverse of the bank's accounts. The muddling up of debit and credit because of bank statements should vanish quickly after that.
While you're right about balance being fundamental, debit representing what you have -vs- credit representing what you owe is critical in understanding viewpoint, designing the balance sheet, and communicating with accounting professionals.
It boils down to only one principle: "Every transaction must balance". This is similar to the base natural law of energy conservation. There's no free money. Money going to one account has to come from somewhere.
The rest is convention, what we call income/revenue, expense, liability and equity, and how to structure our accounts and reports. It's all nicely explained in http://ledger-cli.org/3.0/doc/ledger3.html
Give ledger-cli a try. It has superb manual, and after reading it I stopped being cofused by bookkeeping terminology used elsewhere.