Afterword & Next Steps

If you've come here after finishing the course then congratulations! I hope you enjoyed working through it as much as I did writing it!

There are no more articles (for now...) but I wanted to provide some pointers in the right direction to where you should be going next to continue your quantum computing journey. The Additional Materials page has the links for all the below suggestions:

• The classic "Mike & Ike" textbook has served as a great reference for me in writing this course and covers just about everything we've covered here with even more excruciating detail on the specifics. It's a great way to tie up some of the loose ends around the topics we've covered. We only cover about the first half of the book, the second half will take you deeper into more advanced topics such as quantum information, error-correction and quantum complexity. It is the most highly recommended next step I can give.
• Much of quantum computing research currently takes place in Physics departments. If you're interested in taking a look at the physics angle of things then MIT has uploaded 3 whole courses on quantum mechanics available for free on Open Courseware. Seeing what we've discussed from a physics standpoint will give you a new perspective and solidify many of the concepts we've discussed here.
• Another interesting next step could be to look at some more practical hands on study of quantum computing. The book "Programming Quantum Computers" by Eric R. Johnston, Nic Harrigan & Mercedes Gimeno-Segovia is a great resource for learning how to program a QPU (Quantum Processing Unit) using QASM. It's a great way to get hands on with quantum computing and see how the theory we've discussed here can be put into practice. Another popular tool is Qiskit from IBM. This is a fully featured package of software to help you write/run your own quantum algorithms.

Thanks for taking the time to study the course! I'd love to hear any and all feedback. You can find my contact details in the About section.