27 Aug 2000 TheBean   » (Journeyer)

I am in the middle of developing a new quantum algorithm and testing/debugging it using QDD and QCL.

I once had a discussion with a friend in which we concluded that the best tool developers are those who use their own tools. Perhaps this sounds obvious, but it isn't always so. I remember a conversation I was involved in with an individual developing software to assist in the software development process. (are you with me? :) The individual was asked if they used their own software to develop their software. They replied that their own software was too complex for their own tool. Hmm ..

Anyway, it has been interesting using QDD in the development process .. you really begin to appreciate what your software needs once you start to use it. Perhaps this is what makes "free" software so good .. the people who write it are writing it to use it. Perhaps this is also what makes free software documentation so poor .. you already know how it works, why write it down? (I am guilty of this in spades).

QDD is pretty good (from a quantum computing standpoint) at the one task it was originally designed to perform .. quantum factoring using Shor's algorithm .. and I never have claimed that QDD was an accurate model of quantum physics. However, I am finding that I do need it to be better and more accurate than it currently is in order to be useful for developing/debugging quantum algorithms.

So .. back to work!

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