Quantum Computing: Hype vs. Reality

It's still years, and likely - decades for quantum computers to be used in practice.

There's hype in finance, too - but realistically, with proper developer tools, organisations can achieve over and above the required speeds using the traditional CPUs/GPUs - and without breaking the bank (no pun intended).

Even if one achieves ground-breaking results using an ultra-expensive chip, in no way it means that an average developer will achieve anything like that, even if provided access to cutting-edge quantum computers.

I think there's a lot hiding in the human-computer interface, and the true power of the existing CPU/GPUs is not fully utilised due to the inherent complexities of the programming languages. Needless to say that relatively simple hardware advancements such as vectorisation and multithreading, are rarely used to full extent in popular languages such as C++ or Python.

My bet is that the ROI of any Quantum Development will be negative for decades. So, unless one's planning horison is 10+ years, or you simply don't care for ROI, I'd choose something more mainstream such as CPU/GPU/TPU...