>> Still, the progress since conceiving this field in the early 90s is astronomical.
I know next to nothing about quantum computers but I note that the first programmable computers were created a few years after Alan Turing's "On computable numbers" in 1936. In fact, after Turing described a Universal Turing Machine, programmable computers started appearing left and right with many groups in the USA and Europe at least building their own [1].
What I mean by this is that, as someone who doesn't know much about quantum computing, it seems that any practical applications of the approaches that are frequently hailed as breakthroughs in the lay press seem to be taking a much longer time than I'd expect, given the prior of classical computers and how fast they were possible to implement in practice and start using for real.
Probably this means that creating a quantum computer is a much harder problem - but then, that's perhaps something to keep in mind when trying to make sense of the reported progress in the field, for those outside it?
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[1] Oh and let's not forget Charles Babbage and his analytical engine, never fully built but nevertheless perfectly serviceable (at least on paper). And the work of just one man (who incidentally also invented feature creep at the same time).
I would say it is legitimately much more difficult. Pretty much since the conception of quantum mechanics up until around year 2000 most luminaries of the field would say "it is impossible to harness single-particle quantum effects, all human tech would be based on collective behavior". And to realize a quantum advantage you need those single-particle effects. Kinda like asking Babbage to build the analytical engine before the wheel (let alone the cog) was invented.
Another thing to keep in mind: Creation of a working quantum computer would be a monumental achievement, letting humans harness the full computational power of nature's laws, a defining moment in a civilizations technical capabilities, etc. However, there are only a handful of computational problems at which quantum computers would be exponentially better than classical (most notably simulating novel materials and drugs and certain optimization problems). While these problems are simply impossible on classical computers, for the majority of other problems classical and quantum computers would be on equal footing.
I know next to nothing about quantum computers but I note that the first programmable computers were created a few years after Alan Turing's "On computable numbers" in 1936. In fact, after Turing described a Universal Turing Machine, programmable computers started appearing left and right with many groups in the USA and Europe at least building their own [1].
What I mean by this is that, as someone who doesn't know much about quantum computing, it seems that any practical applications of the approaches that are frequently hailed as breakthroughs in the lay press seem to be taking a much longer time than I'd expect, given the prior of classical computers and how fast they were possible to implement in practice and start using for real.
Probably this means that creating a quantum computer is a much harder problem - but then, that's perhaps something to keep in mind when trying to make sense of the reported progress in the field, for those outside it?
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[1] Oh and let's not forget Charles Babbage and his analytical engine, never fully built but nevertheless perfectly serviceable (at least on paper). And the work of just one man (who incidentally also invented feature creep at the same time).