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Tangentially, noticed some good Python libs for Quantum computing have started appearing lately (one from google, Cirq for eg) could be a natural progression (from scientific computing). Good to see Python is making a presence there as well. Looks like it's going to stay relevant for a very long time.

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Quantum computing won't require much extra power that python can't provide, the only heavy processing will be circuit generation which is (as far as we can see at the moment) fine to use python for.

In the sort term though there's a big place for languages like C, C++ and Rust for things like simulations which need to be done

Yes, there are two reasons that python is an ideal tool for quantum computing libraries at the moment.

- In the NISQ era [1], circuits have limited depth and size. It doesn't matter so much which language (or even algorithm!) you use when N<1000.

- Simulating a circuit is expensive, but all the heavy lifting can be delegated to highly optimized C code. The most expensive part of Cirq's simulation is (or soon will be) a call to `numpy.einsum` [2].

1: https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00862

2: https://github.com/quantumlib/Cirq/blob/24638f234704686c4bb6...

The next part in the tutorial series is out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17637553

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