Going into Business? Learn a Programming Language | Hacker News Reader

Going into Business? Learn a Programming Language

charleshooper.net

13 pointshoop12 comments

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Anon.

Or just use a spreadsheet maybe??

"There are also times when it’s a good idea to make a spreadsheet, but even this can be overkill."

I think the point was not on the specific class but thinking of business from a macro perspective. The author was better able to grasp things and use his programming background to his advantage.

Hi cshenoy, that was exactly my point. Thank you

A spreadsheet would have prevented the author from using floating point to represent money.

What is the issue with using floating point to represent money?

get out.

  Time spent writing obvious reply:        $2.50
  Good faith deduction:                   ($1.00)
  Deduction for joke comment opportunity: ($1.50)

  Dear jbl, your invoice total is $0.00000027.

Ah. Right. Rounding errors and other floating point issues. Guess I should have my coffee before reading HN. headdesk

For the purposes of my example assignment, I am required to provide all answers rounded to the nearest dollar (hence the call to round().) For a one-off (or ten-off) series of calculations the use of floating point is a non-issue.

No kidding. This was an awfully bad example. I use a REPL for this kind of math too, but it's because I'm too lazy to learn how to use Excel properly.

FYI, Ledger is CLI and designed for accounting and keeping books:

https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/wiki

There's a python implementation as well, if that's more up your hacking alley: https://furius.ca/beancount/

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