You
All right.
Can you hear me?
All right.
I'm going to start with our next talk.
We have Veronica here.
She's going to tell us a little bit about breaking the gap
and about how classical software development can really be used
a lot and important.
Hi Veronica.
Thank you for being here.
I'm so happy and honored to be here.
Awesome has been probably my favorite conference for many years.
So very happy to present in this room.
So who am I?
I am Veronica Lopizama Distributed Systems Engineer,
but originally I studied physics first.
And then for many personal reasons, I switched into the computer world
or although to be fair, even when I was in the physics world,
I was always spending most of my time on computer land with simulations,
with foretron, then with Python.
And I always gravitated towards there,
but then when I made the decision to switch,
it became mostly computers.
So this was still my student level,
was graduate type of courses.
So as I said, I would look for all the intersections
between physics, maps, and actual computers.
So one time I came across quantum computing.
This was a long time ago.
People usually tell me that I look younger than I am,
so this was over 12 years ago.
So it was very interesting for me that I started exploring
quantum computing from the physics side,
and I'll go back to this.
That the focus and physics from the physics side
was mostly the maps, the logic gates,
all the theory, all the quantum theory.
And then the computing part was like an afterthought.
And then when I switched to computer science,
it was the other way around.
I would still attend the courses and read the papers,
sit the tests, but the focus was completely different.
They did not care that much about the maps.
It was intensive algorithm studies, et cetera,
and just some maps to understand the papers.
But yeah, I think you get the picture.
So it became really evident for me
that whoever would master this area.
I mean, this is in the mind of a silly young students.
Whoever would master this area at some point in time
would have to be good at both disciplines.
Or at least now, in hand side,
I don't think that to be good at quantum computing,
you have to be an expert on both sides,
but at least having notions of what is happening
on the other side of the world.
So going a little bit back, all of the story
and personal anecdotes are literally the thread of this talk.
So bear with me, I have points.
So I'm also a certified young instructor,
and this is very important for all of this
because I am obsessed with interconnectedness
of systems, of particles, of quantum things, of people,
and how some know here, a Kubernetes,
will affect the notes here that we didn't know about.
So that is basically distributed computing.
So fast forward to many years later
that I became a computer scientist
and I started having jobs.
I got very interested in distributed systems.
So that has been my main area.
Nowadays, I work at a company called AudZed.
We have this tool called SpicyB.
Then I'm going to talk about it later.
So this is a bit of the background combined in all these things.
So from time to time, obviously I assume I do not work with
Kubernetes, I do not work with quantum things
directly, at least, but it has always been a passion of mine
to still belong to this world, at least from the sidelines.
So from time to time, I still have all my subscriptions
to the journals and stuff.
So when I am waiting for things to compile,
I go and read little bits of nature and stuff.
So in the past couple of years,
there have been different achievements
and the quantum world, quantum computing world,
especially from Google.
So every time that there is a new milestone
and a new achievement, the way it's communicated
is that, oh, it's this new thing.
I don't even have the words, you know,
but they have to make it sound grand.
For good purposes, but also sometimes it sounds
a bit too pompous.
So I say this with love,
so my colleagues and people that are science
adjacent, meaning that our technical enough
to understand some concepts but who do not have
a background in physics,
usually tend to go by what the marketing
of those announcements go by.
This is important because I'm relevant to this
because every time that there is a new announcement
of quantum computing milestone, people ask me,
oh, is it true that now they prove
that there are multiple universes
existing at the same time?
Is it true that in a certain,
they created a black hole
that people don't know about?
No.
So it's cool when people ask me.
And so then I can go on and tell them,
oh no, I see where you come from, but that's not.
But the issue comes when someone shares
the news article, and I don't know slack,
or whatever, affirming like,
well, see guys, the multiple universe,
theories, proven love, and then I am like,
and sometimes I have the will to explain
most of the time I don't.
So whenever I see things like that,
it prompts me to go and do,
and I don't know, like, do my research again.
So, with all of this, I'm trying to say that
this talk is about my very informed
but still my opinion.
So what I want you to take away from this
is that people from all walks
of technical life can contribute
to the quantum computing world.
Layers of the civilization, like in the classical
computing world, I need it.
So it's okay if you're not good at maths,
but be aware of that you need linear algebra.
Now it's very popular because AI and crypto and all those things.
So learn your AI.
You're linear algebra.
Sorry.
But you don't have to be an expert.
So quantum computing is an isn't
an isolated quantum bubble anymore.
Right now, it's not as if we are going to wake up in
2027 and suddenly say, you know what, guys?
Computers are obsolete now.
We now have to use quantum computers from now on
and whoever does not know the shores algorithm
won't have a job anymore.
I think as the previous talks and the upcoming ones
will explain to you,
that we are already in the middle of a quantum revolution
in computer land where some bits are already in use.
There are some companies in the real world
and Silicon Valley too that are hiring
software engineers for regular software engineering jobs,
for Kubernetes stuff, for database stuff,
for performance stuff.
That don't necessarily require you to have a background
in physics or advanced maths.
So that's a really nice gateway to start there.
I think I would have done that.
And those options been possible back when I was young.
So this is a very silly example for you to understand what I mean
with, this is that continuum.
So for example, IBM Quantum Organizes multiple users jobs
based on priority and availability.
So though the execution is quantum computing,
the priorization of the jobs is handled by an algorithm,
a classical priorization algorithm, you know,
shorting algorithm.
So your job as a software engineer is understanding priorities
like any other system.
Example two, aggregation of results.
Again, how you, in this era, even in classical computing,
having good visualizations, knowing what data is signal,
what data is noise, all that you have to be attuned
to what's important in your system.
So it's no different in a quantum computing system.
And it's even more important because in quantum land,
we will get where more data, way more noise, way more results
that are many times full of noise.
So with your training as a software engineer,
you can actually not only help but tell scientists
how to discern from this thing.
So I have other examples.
But the most important part, and that I took from distributed systems,
is to design for failure.
Because things will fail.
It does not matter how good we are, how many PhDs we have,
how long we've been coding from six years old, whatever.
So this was a critical mindset for me at least,
because I started coding as a scientist,
which meant that my code had to be perfect for the journals,
perfect for the experiments, like one shot.
You had one shot at very sophisticated computers.
I think right now it's a bit like that for like quantum computing
time, it's so precious this day.
But that meant at least in my side of science,
that those algorithms, that code,
we're not always the most efficient,
we're not always the cleanest, we're not always the fastest,
but they had to be accurate.
So when I transitioned into software engineering,
I would try to have a code that was perfect
in terms of like accurate.
But it took me a while to have that.
And if you work in software engineering,
you know like ship ship ship ship,
and I started working in Silicon Valley.
I was like, no, it does not matter if it's horrible,
but it has to.
You have to ship things fast.
So that means that you will fail a lot,
but because of human errors,
but also because distributed systems work like that.
I won't emphasize that more.
So I think that in quantum land,
this is super, super important.
You will see in this life that I'm giving more examples about that.
But the main topic or sub topic about this idea of full tolerance
comes or at least to me comes from the quantum error correction.
That is one of the hardest problems to solve these days,
as you might not or not,
but this can span its own conference.
And with quantum computing,
it's basically the way I see it.
Failure with more errors,
it is very expensive to not only in cash,
but in time and in qubits and stuff to correct this things.
So your experience as a software engineer helps with that.
Last but not least, security.
So every fortnight, we host session on YouTube,
33 from my company,
where people ask different things.
So one, not one time.
A few times people have asked us
if quantum encryption will make our tool obsolete
or similar tools obsolete.
The answer is no.
Well, by the way,
it provides role-based access control.
It's open source.
And we have an annotated paper,
because it's based on Sansubar,
the Google paper,
but since Sansubar,
the code is closed source,
we have to figure out how they did it.
So we have a paper with our annotations,
I recommend you to read it.
So this is just an angel,
but important for my point of,
we'll quantum encryption
make our solutions obsolete.
And the answer is no.
I'm not just because I'm selling that.
Really?
Because we will still have to have role-based access control.
We will still have to need encryption of all sorts.
So what we need to do is evolve with the systems.
Like, adapt the existing algorithms in the classical ones
to interact.
And I have a word that I don't remember,
but converge with the quantum ones.
And eventually,
one of my colleagues likes to say that
as a definition of success in our jobs
is to, when we manage to automate ourselves out of a job.
So, because that meant that we really
understood the assignment we were efficient,
we executed, and we do well.
So, we can only dream of the day
where quantum computing tasks are
automatable and not without errors,
but managed errors so that they can grow
and have real usage in the world at scale.
So, I hope you found this useful.
If you have any questions,
I am on Blue Sky.
Also, you can write me an email.
And if you have the time and you like it,
please give us a star and spy ZB.
And I'm happy to chat here
or afterwards on the internet.
Thank you very much.
I have time for one question.
Or, yeah, one question?
No.
Yeah, hope it there.
There is no microphone.
Thank you.
I'm a general manager.
So, what would you suggest to get started
in programming some basic
future for older languages?
Yeah, in the slides.