Classical Computers count numbers and do math on numbers. Quantum Computers count collections of numbers and do math on entire collections of numbers.

One is like cooking a full course meal on a single stovetop, the other is doing the same but using an entire restaurant kitchen. The end result is the same meal, but the approach was different. The home chef classic computer has to cook things in the order they were served in, but was able to clean dishes and prepare each step. Problems could be identified and fixed swiftly, buIt took a long time and there were probably a lot of delays between courses so it wasn’t the best meal and a lot of shortcuts and hacks are done to keep things moving.

The restaurant chef does the whole thing all at once and staggers cook timings so everything arrives at the right time. They have no time so they need to carefully plan ahead and set things up, then they have to burn through a shitload of energy making the meal. If anything goes wrong, the whole thing collapses. It may take a higher level of skill to make the meal, but that skill is still founded on the core principles found at home cooking and can even be used at home in a limited manner.

Technically quantum computers can’t do anything new, but the speed boost allows us to do things that are currently impossible. Doing more math at the same time in huge batches is the compututational speed equivalent of breaking the sound barrier.

Computers only operate with a 1 or 0. Quantum computing is the ability to have multiple values between 1 and 0. This allows for more complex calculations to be done with less steps.

My understanding is it’s much better with working with probabilistic problems. Something that could take a trillion years to guess with a traditional computer could be done reasonably fast with a quantum computer.

To my understanding Its like regular computing but better in doing specific things and worst at other stuff.