Abstract: Despite extraordinary challenges, research worldwide has led to remarkable advances in the exquisite control of individual quantum systems. Today, microwave-controlled superconducting circuits represent one of the “hot” candidates for the quantum hardware needed in a future quantum computer. I will give a brief review of the history, summarize how quantum mechanics manifests in these circuits, and then present theory work on developing a next generation of superconducting qubits using superinductor circuit elements. The new devices may realize intrinsic error protection by employing energy-degenerate wave functions with disjoint support. I will end with an outlook on the use of superconducting qubits in photon-based quantum simulation.