According to a January 2020 story in Wired.com,
a senior Google engineer gave a talk in November 2019
where he claimed that there were only "800 people in
the world have the expertise needed to truly
understand how to apply quantum algorithms."
The number of people has, of course, swelled since
then. But, there hasn't been a groundswell of
computer professionals to match the multi-fold
increase of the power of quantum computers.
Part of the reason for this mismatch is that
quantum computing is rooted in advanced math and
has a much steeper learning curve than other
technologies. But, I believe, that an even greater
reason is that the quantum mechanical concepts
required to write quantum algorithms jars
common sense so violently that it's hard for people
to get their arms around it.
My aim is convey that if
you let your mind wander playfully and you loosened the
restrictions of a digital bit, you too could have
conceived something akin to quantum computing.
Although quantum computing has its roots in the
angular momentum and spins of sub-atomic particles,
in this tutorial, using pictures, I abstract out the
esoteric physics and demonstrate quantum concepts
in terms that are familiar to those coming
from a classical computing background.
I'll take you to the core quantum concepts
without sacrificing the fundamental quantum mechanical
tenets that underlie this new way of computing.
The ideas you'll see here are based on
my book, but I've presented them in a
never-before-published way that gives you the
essence of quantum computing in a refreshing way.
I've modeled this tutorial on the following books that also talk about advanced mathematics that focus on ideas and concepts rather than equations: