Why not simply make a typescript compiler for Q# rather than asking the brains of over stretched developers to learn yet another code in their spare time.
Microsoft asks devs for quantum leap of faith
Those without access to a quantum computer can console themselves with Microsoft's Quantum Development Kit, introduced as a preview release on Monday. Quantum computing has been around as as a plausible idea since the 1980s, based on earlier theoretical work on quantum information systems. But it would take until 2011 before …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 13th December 2017 19:34 GMT bombastic bob
"Why not simply make a typescript compiler for Q#"
It's the "pound" part, like C-pound, F-pound, and now Q-pound, intended to lock you into using Micro-shaft solutions. And when I look at it I see too much "magic stuff" and it bothers me...
I'd prefer a lingo called 'Q' that had a gcc or clang back-end. I really do NOT want to be locked-in with a Micro-shaft "solution".
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Tuesday 12th December 2017 06:40 GMT Milton
Overcoming a wee tad of scepticism
Like many, I suspect that while quantum computing holds promise, it's being grossly over-hyped right now (yes, like so-called AI) and, for practical results, may remain "a few years away" for a decade or two. (Indeed, there are defensible grounds for believing that true AI will not exist until quantum computing actually works to scale.)
As for Q#, which I've taken a look at (without, I may add, pretending to understand all of it during an hour's perusal!) I can make one confident prediction. Most Reg readers long since realised the truth of the fact that where coding is concerned there are indeed sheep and goats. We've all worked in places where there were both (and of course, management were incapable of understanding the difference). Now, though, I predict that we new a new animal analogy. Henceforth, we'll have to refer to sheep, goats, and ... Racehorses? Gorillas? Any ideas ...?
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Tuesday 12th December 2017 14:12 GMT handleoclast
Re: Overcoming a wee tad of scepticism
Henceforth, we'll have to refer to sheep, goats, and ..
Shoats*, obviously. They're quantum-entangled and you don't know whether they're sheep or goats until you observe them.
Or geeps, if they're a bit of both.
*Yes, shoats exist. They're unrelated to sheep or goats. But there's no reason to let facts get in the way of a joke.
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Tuesday 12th December 2017 07:12 GMT Ken Moorhouse
To enable traditional coders to transition to new concepts more easily...
...they've retained the same format of error message we are all familiar with e.g.,
Severity Code Description Project File Line Suppression State
Warning The command ""C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\packages\Microsoft.Quantum.Development.Kit.0.1.1712.901-preview\build\..\tools\qsc\qsc.exe" --input "Bell.qs" --references "C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\packages\Microsoft.Quantum.Canon.0.1.1712.901-preview\lib\net461\Microsoft.Quantum.Canon.dll" "C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\packages\Microsoft.Quantum.Development.Kit.0.1.1712.901-preview\lib\net461\Microsoft.Quantum.MetaData.dll" "C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\packages\Microsoft.Quantum.Development.Kit.0.1.1712.901-preview\lib\net461\Microsoft.Quantum.Primitives.dll" "C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\packages\Microsoft.Quantum.Development.Kit.0.1.1712.901-preview\lib\net461\Microsoft.Quantum.Simulation.Common.dll" "C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\packages\Microsoft.Quantum.Development.Kit.0.1.1712.901-preview\lib\net461\Microsoft.Quantum.Simulation.Core.dll" "C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\packages\Microsoft.Quantum.Development.Kit.0.1.1712.901-preview\lib\net461\Microsoft.Quantum.Simulation.QCTraceSimulatorRuntime.dll" "C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\packages\Microsoft.Quantum.Development.Kit.0.1.1712.901-preview\lib\net461\Microsoft.Quantum.Simulation.Simulators.dll" "C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\packages\System.ValueTuple.4.4.0\lib\net461\System.ValueTuple.dll" --outputpath obj\qsharp\src\" exited with code -1. Bell
Severity Code Description Project File Line Suppression State
Warning The namespace body is invalid Bell C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\Bell\Bell.qs 1
Warning Symbol Set is undefined Bell C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\Bell\Bell.qs 17
Warning Symbol Set is undefined Bell C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\Bell\Bell.qs 18
Warning Symbol Set is undefined Bell C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\Bell\Bell.qs 35
Warning Symbol Set is undefined Bell C:\Users\Nick\source\repos\Bell\Bell\Bell.qs 36
Ahh, bliss!
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Tuesday 12th December 2017 13:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Quantum? You couldn't even get the basics right, Microsoft.
They abandoned WinFS in favour of ReFS, which has been released and has been available for use since Server 2012 (IIRC, if not 2016) and Windows 10.
I tried formatting a disk to it a while back and got an error. It looked to be fairly 'beta' quality and required some virtual volume being configured in order to use it so I didn't bother going any further.
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Tuesday 12th December 2017 21:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Quantum? You couldn't even get the basics right, Microsoft.
"ReFS is production quality now, and also has most of the features of NTFS."
Good news, I'll give it another go. Do you know if it is recommended over NTFS? I have considered it for DB servers but didn't want to be first to say "jump". :)
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Wednesday 13th December 2017 19:58 GMT bombastic bob
Re: Quantum? You couldn't even get the basics right, Microsoft.
"Remember WinFS"
My guess is that it smashed itself up against the wall of reality, and MShaft discovered how grossly inefficient it was [like the registry, not to be confused with 'El Reg'].
ReFS (the new 'WinFS' incarnation, apparently) doesn't sound like it's going to be much better. It sounds like MShaft's attempt to embrace, extend, and extinguish ZFS [which wouldn't surprise me]. but I can boot FreeBSD from a ZFS-only file system. I bet you [still] can't do that (boot windows) with ReFS.
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Tuesday 12th December 2017 10:00 GMT Schultz
... a computer that computes in a billion parallel universes at the same time... -- NOT
You could say that our universe calculates itself. Exactly. Exclusively. Every particle (atom, molecule, ...) is continually solving it's Hamiltonian in real time, including all perturbations from the rest of the universe. You want to calculate another universe, you need another universe.
That's how those things scale.
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Tuesday 12th December 2017 10:39 GMT Mage
sharing information through quantum entanglement,
Um, an aid to encryption by allowing detection of tampering. The quantum entanglement itself by definition can't be used as a communications medium. Not a basis for an Ansible.
An analogy
Imagine two randomly ordered packs of cards that happen to be in the same order. But you don't know what it is. If you shuffle one the other is shuffled identically, instantly, but holder of other pack doesn't know it's been shuffled. They can both look and then at light speed share the results with each other. If they don't match, then the messages or the card packs have been tampered with.
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Tuesday 12th December 2017 11:05 GMT Teiwaz
Parallel..erm...ograms?
They want to increase slurp beyond perceived reality?
The first thing to realize about parallel universes, the Guide says, is that they are not parallel.
It is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either, but it is easiest if you try and realize that a little later, after you've realized that everything you've realized up to that moment is not true.
The reason they are not universes is that any given universe is not actually a thing as such, but is just a way of looking at what is generally known as the WSOGMM, or Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash doesn't actually exist either, but it is just the sum total of all the different ways there would be of looking at it if it did.
Mostly Harmless by Douglass Adams (his dark phase)
There's probably nothing in those boxes but penguins....
icon : there's penguins in the boxes, guaranteed....OSS and metaphorical.
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Wednesday 13th December 2017 20:02 GMT bombastic bob
Re: Parallel..erm...ograms?
how do we KNOW that the simulation engine creating those simulated qubits aren't just pseudo-random algorithms, such that calling your 'whatever' function (that's supposed to entangle them) isn't just forcing them into the next predictable number in the sequence?
Just wanted to point that out.
also just as bad if they're 2 parallel threads looking at the EXACT! SAME! ENTROPY!!
not much "entanglement" there, yeah...
icon, because, "black box" doesn't help them.
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