Quantum Computing

A Guide for the Curious


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Despite growing excitement over its potential impacts, quantum computing remains terribly misunderstood. The industry does a poor job making itself legible to outsiders, and existing explainers for the general public are either narrowly scoped or totally facile. This work attempts to explain 'quantum computing': its theoretical underpinnings, its hardware implementations, and its potential applications — all at a level that a reasonably motivated layman could take in. This project stemmed from my personal confusion about the field, and as I result I attempted to write the book that answered my own questions.

A few disclosures: I am an electrical engineer, not a quantum physicist. I don’t work for the quantum industry, and have tried to be as intellectually honest as possible when writing this work. Furthermore, this is 100% grass-fed human made text (although Claude helped me with the web design). This was all written in early-to-mid 2026, and may go out of date.

I hope you enjoy reading this!

You can download the full text as a pdf or epub, or browse on this website.

About the author

Michael Solomentsev is an engineer, entrepreneur, and sometimes writer. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and recently spent two years attempting to commercialize his research in advanced data center power architectures (via his startup, Palanquin Power). Michael is interested in novel technology and its diffusion to the market.

He has a website and blog. Inquiries, comments, or corrections are welcome via email.