Re: Quantum::Superpositions prob

[flyingmoose]

Side-question: This is a very cool module, and I like the idea of being able to use any() and all() (which are also cool functional programming ideas), and it poses the theoretical questions of what would be possible with Quantum computing. My question is this -- is anyone using this for real world programs (business apps? phyics apps?). I'd love to hear what they are being used for. I'd use it more myself if it's approved for such usage! (Any drawbacks?)

I also like the built in Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Quantum::Entanglement. Very very cool. That doesn't do what (I'm confused -- never mind -- but it's still cool!)

[TimToady]

Well, I don't know if you count this as a real-world app yet, but Perl 6 will support superpositions (known there as "junctions") out of the box. So you'll probably see lots of real programs eventually that say things like:

    if $x == 1 | 2 | 4 | 8 {...}

without realizing that they've just generated and used an any(). (And TheDamian's forthcoming Perl6::Junctions module is just a reworking of Quantum::Superpositions without all the hifalutin' physics jargon, and with the lofalutin' infix junctional operators.)

And before you ask, yes, we renamed the Perl 5 bitops to something else just so that we could steal them for junctions. That's how important we think they are.

[flyingmoose]

So that is apparently an 'any', so is 'all' still supported with Perl6 core? Can we still do cool stuff like if (any($h,$i,$j) < all ($x,$y,$z)) ? How does that look? I am supposing the junctions would not support arithmetic operations between junctions? (If there is an article or a usenet thread I should read, feel free to point me to it if this is complicated)

Anyhow, color me excited!

[TimToady]

Yes. Yes. The same, only you can drop the outer parens on the if. Why would you suppose that? Deja is your friend.

[DrHyde]

is anyone using this for real world programs

It's useful for operations like calculating intersections and differences between sets. However, if you are crippled by a classical computer (I once built a quantum computer, but then I looked at it wrong and it turned into a cheeseburger) it can be VERY slow when dealing with anything beyond trivial amounts of data. It's certainly useful for prototyping, but I don't often let it go through into production code.