21–30 of 55 posts
But for me what really helped was Quantum Computing Without the Physics by Nannicini. Aaronson is not formal enough or really a textbook to teach and explain quantum algos like Simons (a good first algo) or Grover. It is an amazingly fun book though.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.03684
Nielsen and Chuang is the standard textbook but was not useful to me sadly. I wouldn’t recommend it to a beginner outside the framework of a course.
I would suggest starting from the basics of quantum physics if you don't already have a solid foundation. MIT has several excellent courses on the subject [1-4]. The first two are the same course, but taught by different professors with slightly different curriculum. [1] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-i-s... [2] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-i-s... [3] https://ocw.…
I disagree. One does not need to know quantum physicr to learn quantum computation, as scott aaronson argues in "quantum computing since democritus". I personally feel I actually understood more quantum physics by playing around with quantum algorithms
We have compiled learning resources [2], organize workshops and hackathons (i.e. we are behind the Quantum track at FOSDEM [3]) and even offer mentorships [4] for people that have some QC knowledge and are interested in entering the field of quantum SW development.
Originally the effort started as surveying the current state of open source software in QC [1], but shortly afterwards we realized that the field could benefit (similar as AI has), among other things, from more people with SWE background joining and helping the ecosystem grow, making the individual pieces of the QC stack more robust and interoperable, but also completely building parts that are currently missing.
In that spirit, more recently we are trying to organize efforts to help the open source quantum ecosystem by building various projects where people with good SWE background could be very helpful.
Write me a short info about you at `tomas at qosf.org` with "[HN]" prefix if interested to volunteer some of your time!
We're hoping to add couple of people into the team, and looking for people with a different backgrounds (Python is the language of the science world in QC, but we have use for everything ranging from devops, frontend to backend skillsets).
[0] https://qosf.org
[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
[2] https://qosf.org/learn_quantum/
[3] https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/track/quantum_computing/
We've recently added an IDE [2], we've got tutorials [3] and YouTube videos [4] to guide you through the learning process. Additionally, we've recently released a hybrid solver service [5], which supports up to 10k fully-connected variables.
* The Leap service is available in 37 countries. We just launched in India and Australia this week.
[1] https://www.dwavesys.com/take-leap
[2] https://support.dwavesys.com/hc/en-us/sections/360007452933-...
[3] https://www.dwavesys.com/resources/tutorials
[4] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6_etbfDnWMxAuYj9qD1qmA
[5] https://www.dwavesys.com/sites/default/files/14-1039A-A_D-Wa...
I like her because she writes code for a living AND has worked at quantum computing startups, and went to postgrad for quantum, so she can go really deep on both areas and their intersection.
She's also on Twitter https://twitter.com/amarchenkova
As a side track, how far away are we from "quantum cloud services" that I can pass arguments to and receive output from in exchange for a monthly or per-resource-used fee? What types of problems are quantum computers anticipated to solve? I've only heard about how they are able to break certain cryptographical algorithms that were designed long before quantum was even a thought.
As for what types of problems: D-Wave's quantum computers (and adiabatic quantum computers in general) are best suited for optimization problems. Some examples are scheduling, graph coloring, and other NP-hard problems.
AFAIK quantum computing, as a whole, is very far from breaking any kind of interesting crypto.
I would suggest starting from the basics of quantum physics if you don't already have a solid foundation. MIT has several excellent courses on the subject [1-4]. The first two are the same course, but taught by different professors with slightly different curriculum. [1] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-i-s... [2] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-i-s... [3] https://ocw.…
You will also need a pretty good understanding of calculus and linear algebra to understand QM, which many CS people don't have. You could probably learn both at the same time, but it would be challenging. The unfortunate thing about physics is you need to have pretty strong math skills to understand things, and most people's mathematical preparation is not very good.