I like that they talk about their favorite tools and toy models. In grad school, I had a number of toy models and I got to use some of my favorite tools in my research/thesis write up.

For me, one of my favorite tools was a form of perturbation theory which I could apply to all sorts of things. Didn't always work, and I think I annoyed my thesis advisor with it.

> Back in the early 2000s, a question that kept attracting and frustrating people in quantum information is how to build a quantum hard drive to store quantum information.

In the early 2000s, there still existed "Quantum" branded hard drives, in very popular use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Corporation

At first I thought the image was a joke.

Nope; you're just old now if you remember "Quantum Fireball".

I still want to know who turned a "quantum change" from the very smallest change one can possibly make to something revolutionarily large (I bet it was some marketting guy)

This is an amusing meme/complaint, but it is not really correct. In physics "quantum" does frequently imply very small, but its fundamental meaning is a "discrete" change with no intermediate state. Hence, it is perfectly correct to use "quantum leap" to describe a significant development.

P.S. There are now plenty of real-world quantum systems that are centimeter sized. Check "cavity QED".

Quantum leap is also somewhat passable as a name for the period from 1905 to the 1950 when Quantum Mechanics established itself as the foundational theory of physics. I suspect the various pop-accounts of this period to be the source for quantum leap as a term for ”huge change” . I think Quantum revolution is the more common term for the period.

So is it sort of like how we use 'atomic' to mean a single discrete operation in programming?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linearizability

Yes. The name "atom" literally meant "indivisible" in its original greek form. It's fitting for computations that go on undisturbed until completion.

That sounds like a variation of "quantum leap".

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/391644/etymology...

"Quantum leap" justifiably jives with the quantum mechanical meaning.

I am greatly amused to see that the answer on the English Stackexchange is from Peter Shor, one of the people that initiated the Quantum Computing revolution in the 90s and earlier.

He's just sitting there googling for "quantum" anything.

> You're just old now if you remember "Quantum Fireball".

I remember. 27 isn’t old is it?

According to SV startups, you're ancient. :)

Back in the 90s we still had Quantum Effect processors, too.

About halfway through TFA;

“Things start to get technical from here, but...”

Gee, thanks for the warning! </s>