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Currently Quantum Computers Might Be Where Rockets Were At the Time of Goddard
schwit1 writes: If quantum computing is at the Goddard level that would be a good thing for quantum computing. This means that the major fundamental breakthrough that would put them over the top was in hand and merely a lot of investment, engineering and scaling was needed. The goal of being able to solve NP-hard or NP-Complete problems with quantum computers is similar to being able to travel to the moon, mars or deeper into space with rockets. Conventional flight could not achieve those goals because of the lack of atmosphere in space. Current computing seems like they are very limited in being able to tackle NP-hard and NP Complete problems. Although clever work in advanced mathematics and approximations can give answers that are close on a case by case basis.
Because rockets were actually working at that point, maybe not refined, but still useful. Quantum computer is not useful in any way at this time.
Quantum computing is still at the mumbo jumbo stage where they make really bold claims about what it can do in 1 or 2 really specific instances that all of 8 people on the planet care about, but then never follow through with a quantum machine that out performs a classical one in any way.
Oh, and the answer(s) may not even be right and has to be checked using classical methods anyway.
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Quantum computing is like having an old Ford that's broken down, and you would like to fix it. With classical computing, you spend time troubleshooting, eventually identify the problem, order parts, install them, road test it, and you eventually have a working classic Ford again.
With quantum computing, you have an old Ford that's broken down but not broken down at the same time. You simply ignore the broken down state and choose to use the working one. Problem solved.
Give something a fancy name and by-God it has to be a world-changing technology, right? I just don't see it.
So because you can't understand it, it must not be of any consequence? I think that says more about you than it does about the technology.
The hardware is difficult to build / maintain, doesn't scale, and so far nobody is quite sure what to even do with it.
That sounds like pretty much every new technology ever. The first computers were difficult to build and maintain, didn't scale well and people weren't entirely sure what to do with them outside of a few narrow use cases. The first airplanes were difficult to build and maintain, didn't scale well, and... etc. We figured it out eventually. Probably will with quantum computing too in due time.