New to Quantum Computing? Here’s how to start!

Quantum Computing Roadmap 101

Welcome onboard, if you have heard about Quantum Computing and all the fascinating things about Quantum Computers, and then you have gone beyond and dived deeper, but you are still searching for ways to start the journey.

Things you have to learn along:

• Theoretical Learning: If you are new to this Quantum Computing field, then you should definitely get an idea first on what are Qubits, how can we use Interference, Superposition (Oh btw, this is name of a nice playlist of Qiskit channel, here is that, you can check this out too to get some of QC’s vibes!), and Entanglement to gain some (and also what are they?) advantages over classical computing, how to make circuits and then to algorithms, how to make quantum algorithms to achieve Quantum Supremacy, how to work with error-correction (yes, that is one of the hot topics), and what are the variational algorithms (VQE, QAOA, etc.). More on that, and the resources, just after two sec!
• Practical Learning: Now, along with the theoretical journey, you will also have to sharpen your Python skills, and then NumPy skills, and then the Qiskit 1.x (the latest version) skills. That’s all what you need to know now. Let’s dive more from here.

Resources:

• Introduction to Quantum Computing by Quantum Soar (Michael Minaca): This will be a nice starting point for getting an easy-to-grasp way into the Theoretical Realm and Calculations using Quantum Mechanics, Linear Algebra, and Gates to even algorithms! Start it now! Here is a handwritten note of mine while I was going through this.
• Courses of IBM Quantum Learning Platform: Start with Basic of Quantum Information course, and then the algo course, and then the variational algo course. This series of courses is made with videos from the contents of 2023’s Qiskit Summer School, which can be found here. To get more on the noise and noise mitigation, go there.
  Anyway, these videos, along with the reading material that comes with it in the IBM platform, will strengthen you theretical grasp. So be ready to sit with pen and papers, pause the video, read the text, question yourself, dig up online a bit, ask Gemini, and then replay, and continue. The course material is rigorous enough to challenge you, and everyone has something to take from this course!
  And after that comes the Qiskit implementation part, from where you will be learning to code these using Qiskit, a quantum computing framework of python by IBM, and run of your codes on real Quantum Computers! You will be learning to code simultaneously here along with learning the theories.

What Next?

After finishing all these chronologically, starting with Quantum Soar and then patiently going over IBM’s courses, you will be equipped to roam around and choose your specific field later, which can be error-correction, algorithm design, Quantum Machine Learning, Finance applications, Chemistry applications, and many more! And, also, a Roadmap 102 or maybe 201 might be on the way, too!

Ankon Dey Animesh
LinkedIn