welcome
Dear reader,
Thank you for purchasing the MEAP edition of Quantum Programming in Depth!
When I first started to learn quantum computing, the state-of-the-art learning resources included a theory book (typically “Quantum Computation and Quantum Information” by Nielsen and Chuang) and some introductory lectures (if you’re lucky to have access to a quantum computing expert willing to offer them). Most of the quantum programming languages common nowadays were still a thing of the future, so any problem-solving involved pen and paper – a lot of paper.
Since then, quantum computing education made a lot of progress. There are plenty of introductory books, online lectures, tutorials, and even games that aim to introduce the learner to the basic concepts of quantum computing. Multiple quantum programming languages offer an easy start on quantum programming – if you like hands-on learning, there is no longer any need to start with implementing your own quantum simulator!
I am a software engineer by training and by trade, so I believe in learning by doing, in particular, by doing programming projects. And this is where I see a gap in the current quantum education landscape. The vast majority of all learning materials focus on quantum computing 101, not venturing beyond implementing simple algorithms like quantum teleportation and using Grover’s search to look for a hardcoded answer. However, to graduate to doing practical projects, one needs a lot more quantum programming practice than the basics, and making this step can be quite a challenge.
This book aims to bridge this gap, focusing on several aspects of learning quantum computing:
- Hands-on approach: the book walks you through a variety of quantum computing problems, their theoretical solutions and code implementations, and offers you even more problems to try and tackle on your own.
- Incremental difficulty increases: each chapter starts with simple problems and builds up their complexity, so that by the end of the chapter you can confidently solve problems you had no idea about at the beginning.
- Treating quantum computing problems as software engineering projects, complete with ways to test your solution and make sure it does exactly what you wanted it to do.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please share them in Manning’s liveBook Discussion forum for my book: (Manning will fill in the URL.) I would love to hear from you and to know which parts of the book worked for you and, just as importantly, which ones didn’t!
—Mariia Mykhailova
In this book
Appendix. Set up your environment