<story><title>Why now is the best time to study quantum computing (2014)</title><url>http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.00011</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dheera</author><text>Although I have studied the basics of quantum computing, I don&amp;#x27;t think it will become necessary for computer scientists to know the gory physics details of quantum computers. All they will need to know is that a certain function that is normally O(n^2) now has a magical implementation that is O(n), and another function that is normally exponential is now polynomial.&lt;p&gt;Quantum computers will likely manifest themselves as co-processors, and you&amp;#x27;ll have a nice well-abstracted API to access those implementations within traditional languages, i.e.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    #!&amp;#x2F;usr&amp;#x2F;bin&amp;#x2F;env python4
    from quantum import qc
    qc.init(device=&amp;quot;&amp;#x2F;dev&amp;#x2F;quantum0&amp;quot;)
    factors = qc.factor(15)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>s_q_b</author><text>Later in the game, sure. Who&amp;#x27;s going to build the early toolset? Who&amp;#x27;s going to own it? Will their be a FOSS API, or will we be locked in?&lt;p&gt;All of that design infrastructure needs to be built by somebody, and that somebody stands to make a forunate. The tasks you listed are a decent summary of the likely eventual outcome.&lt;p&gt;But:&lt;p&gt;• Who will do the work to create this beautiful API? 
• Who will create this coprocessor architecture?
• Will this theoretical stack be built by Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etcetera, or be FOSS?&lt;p&gt;These questions are completely unanswered, and will affect my users of whatever quantum. When analyzing data, one cannot usually just gloss over the underlying math. All abstractions, by definition, are incomplete.&lt;p&gt;But that&amp;#x27;s the exciting thing about right now. Most inventions occur when science outruns engineering. When engineering and cutting edge science &lt;i&gt;just about&lt;/i&gt; to finally converge, that&amp;#x27;s when market opportunities are most prevalent.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why now is the best time to study quantum computing (2014)</title><url>http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.00011</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dheera</author><text>Although I have studied the basics of quantum computing, I don&amp;#x27;t think it will become necessary for computer scientists to know the gory physics details of quantum computers. All they will need to know is that a certain function that is normally O(n^2) now has a magical implementation that is O(n), and another function that is normally exponential is now polynomial.&lt;p&gt;Quantum computers will likely manifest themselves as co-processors, and you&amp;#x27;ll have a nice well-abstracted API to access those implementations within traditional languages, i.e.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    #!&amp;#x2F;usr&amp;#x2F;bin&amp;#x2F;env python4
    from quantum import qc
    qc.init(device=&amp;quot;&amp;#x2F;dev&amp;#x2F;quantum0&amp;quot;)
    factors = qc.factor(15)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>colanderman</author><text>I came to the same conclusion after implementing a QC emulator. But note that QC doesn&amp;#x27;t even typically change exponential functions to polynomial; rather it will cut the exponent in half.</text></comment>