Comment Quantum comptuers are a different animal... (Score 2) 153
The simple fact of the matter is this: Quantum computers are different tools, and they have different applications. Coincidentally, some of those applications are ``hard problems'' to regular computers.
It's like quantum mechanics: if you want to explain the motions of planets about the sun, I don't suggest you try to solve Schordinger's equation for all the particles in the system. That's a really hard problem in QM. But it converges to Newton's laws in the macroscopic, so using these ``classical'' techniques becomes not only faster, but correct.
Additionally, QCs will need glue to talk to the world; I assume eventually people will want to connect them to networks, and IP addresses are not superpositions. So we will use ``classical computers'' for a long time, just as we still use ``classical mechanics'' for problems which crack well under their scrutiny.
Eric