[Tutor] Quantum computing

[Oscar Benjamin]

On 15 December 2013 16:25, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 03:40:38PM +0000, Mark Lawrence wrote:
>> On 15/12/2013 04:55, William Ray Wing wrote:
>
>> >Well, as it turns out, there actually *IS* a commercially available
>> >quantum computer on the market today.
>>
>> Are you saying that it can't do list comprehensions, recursive functions
>> and floating point arithmetic correctly?
>
> Neither William nor the article say anything about D-Wave's quantum
> computer being unable to do list comprehensions, recursive functions or
> floating point arithmentic correctly.
>
> I'm not an expert on quantum computing, but the impression that I get is
> that trying to use a quantum computer for calculating fundamentally
> classical operations like floating point, or serial calculations like
> list comprehensions, would be rather like somebody being shown a
> "horseless carriage" early in the 20th century and asking "So, how do I
> get it to trot?" The point of an automobile is to get from A to B, not
> to duplicate the motion of a horse, and likewise the point of a quantum
> computer is to solve problems, not to duplicate the exact same
> algorithms that you would use on classical computers.
>
> But I could be wrong.

You're not wrong. I'm not an expert on Quantum computing either (I
almost applied for a PhD in it but changed my mind).

My understanding is that for the foreseeable future anyone who wants
to use a programmable quantum computer (QC) is probably going to have
to write a program on a normal computer to prepare the data/problem
before inputting it into the QC. I don't know about you but it I
needed to write a small program every time I wanted to use my QC
program I would probably think Python a good choice of language for
that part of the process.


Oscar