Microsoft's Quantum Team has good news for quantum enthusiasts and coders looking for new challenges. We are excited to announce Microsoft Q# Coding Contest — Summer 2018! By entering the contest, you can hone your quantum coding skills by tackling problems of varying difficulty and implementing solutions in the quantum programming language Q#. Winners will receive a Microsoft Quantum T-shirt!

Quantum computing is a radically different computing paradigm compared to classical computing. Indeed, it is so different that some tasks that are believed to be classically intractable (such as factoring integers, computing discrete logarithms on elliptic curves, or simulating physical systems) can be performed efficiently on a quantum computer. Microsoft recently introduced the Quantum Development Kit which includes Q# — a new programming language to express quantum programs in a way that makes it easier for classical coders to enter the space. Q# integrates into Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code development environments, and is available as a command line tool. Visual Studio Code allows development under Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The contest will run from July 6 — 9 and will consist of increasingly challenging tasks on introductory topics in quantum computing: superposition, measurement, oracles and simple algorithms.

The rules of the contest are:

The contest will have 12 15 tasks of various complexity levels.

tasks of various complexity levels. To solve each task, you will write Q# code to implement the described transformation on the given set of qubits or to analyze the state of a set of qubits. Solutions are accepted in Q# only.

The solution is correct if it passes all tests from a predefined test set. You will know whether the solution is correct soon after submitting it.

Participants are ranked according to the number of correctly solved tasks.

Ties are resolved based on lowest total penalty time for all tasks, which is computed as follows. For each solved task, a penalty is set to the submission time of that task (the time since the start of the contest). An extra penalty of 20 minutes is added for each failed submission on solved tasks (i.e., if you never solve the task, you will not be penalized for trying that task).

The top 50 ranked participants will receive a Microsoft Quantum T-shirt.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Must be 16 years of age or older. Game ends 7/9/18. For details, see Official Rules.

From June 29 to July 2, we will offer a warmup round with simpler tasks on the topics covered in the main contest. Participation in the warmup round is entirely optional. The warmup round gives you an opportunity to get familiar with the contest environment and submission system beforehand, as well as refresh or learn the basics of quantum computing and Q# programming language. During the warmup round everybody is encouraged to discuss the tasks and the solutions. 24 hours after the start of the warmup round we will publish explanations and solutions to the easiest three problems. Once the warmup round is over, we will publish the editorials on the contest page explaining both the quantum computing logic behind the solution and the Q# implementation.

To start, please refer to Q# installation instructions and language reference.

Quantum computing and Q# materials:

For first time Codeforces users:

Create user account here. Register for the warmup round here. Register for the contest here. Once the warmup round starts on June 29, access the problems and see additional contest materials here. Once the contest starts on July 6, access the problems here.

Good luck! We hope you enjoy the contest!

Update. Explanations for problems A, D and G of the warmup round are published.

Update. The warmup round is over. Explanations for all problems are published.