The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Quantum Computing and Q# Blog

02/26/2018

4 minutes to read

In this article

Lost? Confused? Don't know where to start with all this quantum computing stuff? Don't panic!

This post is intended to function as a start page/guide to help you navigate your way through the various quantum computing and Q# posts hosted here on the Faculty blog (https://aka.ms/faculty).

Q# is Microsoft’s new quantum-focused language, designed to bring the full developer experience to the quantum sphere. Q# comes with all the features you’d expect from a fully-fledged language (functions, loops, variables…), along with a cross-platform developer environment in Visual Studio/VS Code and even a quantum simulator! See this announcement for details on the latest release, bringing a wide range of new language and editor features 😊

Q# and the QDK are fully platform agnostic – that is to say, they are designed to work with any physical implementation of a quantum computer, not restricted to Microsoft’s topological qubit approach. Quantum programs are orchestrated and run using a classical computer (the driver), leveraging the quantum system (be it simulated or physical) when required to speed things up/do funky quantum stuff – much in the same way that we currently use GPUs to speed up the solution of machine learning problems.

Watch this space for a detailed look at what topological qubits are exactly and why we should care – blog post coming soon 😊 Further information on Q#, topological qubits and the QDK can be found here.

This blog is written by Anita Ramanan and Frances Tibble, both software engineers at Microsoft. The blog is split into two complementary tracks – Frances' posts are focused on getting you up and running quickly with Q# and the QDK, whereas Anita's posts aim to provide deeper background on concepts in quantum computing, plus how these translate to Q#.

The Story So Far

(roughly in suggested reading order)

The Road Ahead

Like anything quantum, there’s a degree of uncertainty here – future posts may change!

Getting to Grips with the Quantum Fourier Transform (Anita)

An Aside: Some Important Science Bits (Anita) Gates & the associated maths Matrix transformations

Quantum Computing in the Real World (several posts) (Anita)

Measurement (Frances)

Simple Algorithms (Frances)

Quantum Algorithms – one post per algorithm (Frances and Anita) Integer Factorisation (Frances) To be continued…

Characterisation and Testing Samples (Frances)

Hamiltonian Simulation Samples (Frances)

Awesome Sources of Information

Microsoft Quantum Resources

Lectures

Books/Papers

Other Online Resources

More from Frances & Anita

Getting started with Q# Self-guided tutorial content written by Frances and Anita, aimed at beginners Includes introduction to superposition, entanglement, teleportation, testing & simulation, as well as Q# language tips and information.

TechDaysOnline recording Lots of beginner-level content Keynote from Dr. Julie Love, Director in the Microsoft Quantum team This is the raw recording following the live event - watch this space for the fully edited version!

Recorded Quantum Computing & Q# 101 session from London Quantum Computing Meetup

About the Authors