alt Hacker NewsI've been writing a 'book' (more of an extended blog post that I'd like to put out for free) attempting to explain quantum computing to a layman-ish audience.
I sort of got inspired to do this after seeing so many QC PR posts on HN, and finding the educational material in this space to be either too academic, too narrow in scope, or totally facile. I think given the incredible hype (and potential promise) of this industry, there should be on-ramps for technically minded people to get an understanding of what's going on. I don't think you should need to be a quantum physicist to be able to follow the field (I am only an electrical engineer).
My book tries to cover the computational theory, the actual hardware implementations, and the potential applications of quantum computers. More than that, I want to be unbiased and stray away from what I feel is misleading hype. It's been a work in progress for about 6 months now, with a lot of time spent gaining fluency in the field. But the end is in sight! :)
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Would like to check this out when you're ready to share.
Awesome! Anywhere we can look for updates, like a website?
FWIW, my shallow understanding of quantum computing as a programmer, in case you wanted perspectives from your potential audience:
- I thought quantum physics was a sham? Like on par with string theory. But apparently that's not true
- I hear QC only breaks certain kinds of cryptography algorithms (involving factoring big primes?), and that we can upgrade to more foolproof algorithms.
- I hear that one of the main challenges is improving error bounds? I'm not sure how error is involved and how it can be wrangled to get a deterministic or useful result
- Idk what a qubit is or how you make one or how you put several together