Ledger kind of side steps this "debit" and "credit" issue by just using positive and negative numbers to add to or subtract from a particular account.
If you get paid $1000, your Income account gets -1000 and your Checking account gets +1000.
If you get paid $1000, your Income account gets -1000 and your Checking account gets +1000.
Background: I studied the basics of accounting on 8th and 9th grade, and acted as a treasurer or auditor in some university student associations. I accepted the traditional presentation as a given; "it'll make sense in the end".
Then I learned the negative number thing and the sums-to-zero concept and suddenly it was completely clear what was happening. Ledger manual's "Principles of Accounting with Ledger" was where this finally kicked in.
https://ledger-cli.org/doc/ledger3.html#Principles-of-Accoun...
PTA sign convention makes it very straightforward:
If the posting amount is negative it's a credit
If the posting amount is positive it's a debit.
I use this mnemonic:
debit / to / plus / left / short words
credit / from / minus / right / longer words