Seriously though, quantum computers would almost certainly exist as an entirely different architecture until now unheard of. Any programming language in existence today would probably be obsolete and incapable of being upgraded to handle this new architecture. The approach to problem-solving in a quantum computer cannot, I seem to think, be in any way similar to our current deterministic models.Originally Posted by nimitzhunter
That said, quantum computers are often seen as the future of computation. I strongly disagree. There's no reason to think Quantum computers will handle certain tasks more efficiently. There's plenty of papers on that, although there seems to be some disagreement on what exactly these computers would be good and bad for. Nevertheless everyone seems to agree quantum computers do have specific and important uses that could make them invaluable in key areas. But as a domestic computer, they would probably be useless.
The real progress in computation and the one that seems much more promising is, in my opinion, the research and discovery of new, faster, and more reliable, circuits and ways to store and access data while retaining our current deterministic models. the current research in molecular-based computing for instance, would give us an impressive increase in computational power, greatly reduce (some even argue all but entirely eliminate) power consumption, and introduce computers into a vast array of new applications; nanobots being the one with the most press.
If we can get rid of our silicon dependency we may have just given the next big leap in the history of computation. And, interesting enough, no reason to suspect the current languages and programming disciplines would become obsolete.
