I recently lamented how no one seems to REALLY teach quantum computing, which is to go from problem to theory to math (matrices, bra-ket) to Bloch spheres to gates to circuits to hardware to results to explanations. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of this, but not start-to-finish in one place.

Of particular note, it’s hard to find what the hardware is actually doing. Take the most explained gate in all of quantum computing: the Hadamard. You can find math, Bloch spheres, and the rest, but how do you actually put a qubit into superposition?

Writing an equation doesn’t magically put a qubit into superposition. Drawing a Bloch sphere doesn’t do anything either. And, for some reason, we skip from “run” to results without explaining what just happened.

Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and QuTech, through edX, offer a free course titled “The Building Blocks of a Quantum Computer.” The videos offer the most detailed explanation that I’ve found thus far, at least in regards to how physical circuits work.

So, THAT’s how we put a qubit into superposition and measure it….

A long time ago, I took a classical computing course that started at the transistor level. We worked all the way up to networking and applications. Quantum computing courses should be taught the same way; after all, if it ain’t broke, why break it?