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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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There's two problems with quantum computing:
They are fundamentally analog machines. Digital computers have huge error bars, its basically impossible for a transistor to bit flip naturally. A small change in voltage does not change the represented value. This is untrue of quantum machines, where a small fluctuation in the qubit's underlying state actually causes a change to the represented value.
We have already done tons of research into what we can do with quantum computers. Theoretical quantum computer science is a well researched field. Basically the only thing we've gotten out of it is Shor's algorithm. Its honestly just not that useful even if we had high breakthroughs in the engineering.
40+ years in tech and I've studied QM and QC. I think QC is bogus.
But what I'm genuinely curious is the meta. Why has all the chatter shut down, and what's actually happening? Is the realization it's never going to happen finally real?
What you see in mainstream news is always an exaggeration to hype up the layman. Right now all the hype is still focused on LLMs. The recent quantum breakthroughs that were “big news” a year ago were not as exciting as the news might have made it seem.
Quantum research is still going at a slow but steady pace. We have working quantum computers. However, useful working quantum computers have to compete with massive classical computing clusters, which have a huge head start, even considering the theoretical scaling advantages of quantum computers.
“Quantum supremacy” will come. But it also won’t be that exciting because the problems it’s good for are generally limited to niche scientific research scenarios. Maybe really big data centers might find some use for Grover’s search.
The headline to look out for in regards to quantum computing will be something like “quantum computer discovers new material” (with varying levels of exaggerating language depending on the website). That will mark the start of quantum computers being useful (and potentially profitable).