I think it's great that someone is trying to teach this topic to software engineers and I accept that it's hard to teach but I think that this document doesn't do a good job. Covering the "balancing" of debits and credits as the starting point is too abstract.

GNUCash's (which I use for my personal accounts) guide is unhelpfully down right now, but you can find it here:

http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/

I also found Accounting Demystified very useful:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Accounts-Demystified-Astonishingly-S...