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Why does my teacher think it's reasonable to give an assignment for writing a scientific article about quantum computing in the first semester of CS? Like really? I just got out of fucking high school you bitch, all math I know is basic linear algebra. Thankfully I'm a nerd that likes computers so I got the basis of classical computing covered, I can only imagine how my classmates that never touched a computer are holding up.

Comments
  • 1
    It's not that I don't like the subject, in fact I'm loving it and thinking of specializing in quantum computing one day, but don't you think this is a bit much for a first semester assignment?
  • 4
    Probably to scare everyone off the course who thinks it's going to be about writing println statements, using Excel macros, or just people that think they know it all already.
  • 3
    Interesting enough, one of the most basic mathematical concepts you need to understand to get into quantum computing is linear algebra :D you have the advantage!
  • 2
    @AleCx04 yeah, at least that, but I don't understand 80% of this math because I don't have all the other knowledge required. Dirac's notation, what the hell is a Hilbert space, stuff like that. Little by little I'm learning (and actually understanding \o/) what these are. Then there are quantum mechanics concepts like superposition, entanglement, etc. I get the very basic concept of those but it's hard to find resources explaining it in a way that makes sense and says more than "superposition means a qubit can be 0 and 1 at the same time" without requiring all this math and physics knowledge. Plus learing it all in a month is a bit tight....
  • 2
    TBF, it's not quantum physics. Oh wait... At least it's not rocket science.
  • 1
    @PublicByte yeah... My teacher is crazy, everyone says that. But I think she gave us this assignment to see how well we know how to research and write an article (it's a scientific writing class), so maybe she won't be expecting too much from us.

    Anyways, I think I figured out how to do this. So far I understand pretty decently how qubits work so I think I'll write my article about qubits. That's all. Idk anything about quantum error correction, how the fuck these algorithms work and the math behind all quantum gates. I know the basics of qubits, so I'll write about that, make a decent article about one thing is better then a half-assed one about a dozen things.
  • 2
    Depends on the level of detail required.

    getting a very loose general idea of the possibilities of quantum computing is not that insane.

    Even non-programmers can get the gist of just how hufe the jump quantum computing would be, plus some of the challenges invovled, after reading 15 minutes of wikipedia.

    I think it’s a solid idea to make students read a bit about it just to know SOMETHING about it.

    (Even if it’s not practically viable at the moment. As a comparison: it was good to know how ray-tracing would work even long before it was practically usable in games)
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