There are lots of "checkpoints" one can imagine with the commercialization of a technology. Right now, large industry players, whose survival depends on their tech strategy, are investing in quantum computer R&D. I don't mean that these companies are themselves trying to build quantum computers, but they are interested in applying them to their hardest technical problems.
Quantum computation is such a new and different computing paradigm, that whoever is prepared will be able to reap the benefits much earlier. And, if the promises of scaling are true (they are from a fundamental physics standpoint), such companies will propel themselves far ahead of the competition.
I would say that, in the current stage of development of quantum software and hardware, even a seasoned software professional will not—on short order—be able to apply the tools directly to their problems. As a programming language enthusiast, it's like taking a long-time K&R C programmer, and asking them to be productive in Agda. It's not that they can't, but they probably won't be able to do it by tomorrow. It'll take time, energy, and investment to think in new ways.
I personally believe that commercialization will become more and more apparent when services are accelerated by quantum computation. But how many people are going to share that secret sauce?
That's my goal! It is desirable, and I think it is feasible.
I said in another comment that I think the best thing we can do is get quantum devices in the hands of people and let them play. Unfortunately, for a long time, quantum computers and their programming have been so utterly out-of-reach and opaque that that has been difficult. Now I think we are taking good steps to opening the possibility of experimentation up.
Just to give you an idea, I've spent about 30-45 minutes reading over various materials (the Github links). I think my level of knowledge would be equivalent of understanding how dup, drop, and rot work in FORTH (or car and cdr in Lisp)... Basic element manipulation (bit/qubit, stack, and list).
The difference though, is that I only needed to understand there was a container of multiple items in FORTH and Lisp. For basic element manipulation, I needed to understand matrices.
At this rate, it would take hours before I understand how to write a basic program. And my trailblazer sense is already tingling (that I should let others be pioneers).
Normally I'd just resume lurker mode at this point, but my interest in combinatorics is driving my curiosity towards understanding what might be possible.
I admit it is an unusually larger leap to get to anything useful. We have been blessed to have such a fantastic and intuitive understanding of classical computing. We can pick up most new programming languages gradually and efficiently. When the fundamental object of manipulation is this wacky thing called a "state vector in 2^n dimensional Hilbert space" as opposed to "a bag of bits", and operations must be reversible, and ... and ... and ..., things are just harder.
I hope we (both Rigetti and the quantum computing community at large) can continue to refine and simplify the concepts at hand.
Quantum computation is such a new and different computing paradigm, that whoever is prepared will be able to reap the benefits much earlier. And, if the promises of scaling are true (they are from a fundamental physics standpoint), such companies will propel themselves far ahead of the competition.
I would say that, in the current stage of development of quantum software and hardware, even a seasoned software professional will not—on short order—be able to apply the tools directly to their problems. As a programming language enthusiast, it's like taking a long-time K&R C programmer, and asking them to be productive in Agda. It's not that they can't, but they probably won't be able to do it by tomorrow. It'll take time, energy, and investment to think in new ways.
I personally believe that commercialization will become more and more apparent when services are accelerated by quantum computation. But how many people are going to share that secret sauce?