front matter
For most of its history, quantum computing was a field for physicists—perhaps a few having a proclivity for computer science, but not necessarily so. The popular textbook, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, by Michael A. Nielsen and Isaac L. Chuang, is still considered the go-to textbook, and was written by two quantum physicists. To be sure, computer scientists have always been around, but some theoreticians wear how few lines of code they have written as a badge of honor. This is the quantum world myself, Kaiser, and Granade came of age in. I could easily shake my fist at the new cohort of students and yell, “When I was your age, we didn’t write code—we choked on chalk dust!”
I met Chris Granade while we were both graduate students. Back then we wrote academic journal articles for physics journals that contained lines of code which were rejected for being “not physics.” But we were not deterred. And now, many years later, this book represents for me the ultimate vindication! This is a book that teaches you everything you’ll ever want and need to know about quantum computing, without the need for physics—though, if you really want to know the connection back to physics, Kaiser and Granade offer that as well 😆? There are also emojis 😊!