How to Setup the Quantum Development Kit on Your Machine

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As a tech enthusiast, I get really excited by emerging technology development especially in big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.

Quantum computing is one field that would revolutionalize the way computers would process information in this new age.

In this article, I walk you through how to set-up the quantum development environment on your local machine and also write the conventional ‘Hello World’ in a quantum style.

This article assumes that you have some basic knowledge of the concept of quantum computing and programming. If you do not, that is fine. I have explained the basic concepts that would get you up and running in a different article.

Big companies like Google, IBM, Microsoft, Rigetti are all investing heavily in quantum computing. We would be focusing on Microsoft’s QDK to develop our quantum model.
With the help of quantum computing, we would be able to build sophisticated algorithms that would ensure more scalable and faster applications. Our regular classical computers might not be able to handle the kind of data we would be in use for fields like machine learning, big data, cryptography, blockchain and so on.

Installing the QDK

QDK stands for Quantum Development Kit. The QDK allows us to focus on writing quantum algorithms without having to worry about high-level quantum details. You can demonstrate and implement deep quantum computing concepts like superposition, teleportation, etc using the QDK.

First of all, you would need to download and install the .NET Core SDK, you would need 3.1 and above. You can download it for your operating system here.

Make sure you have Visual Studio Code(VS Code) installed on your machine. You would then need to install the QDK extension on your Visual Studio Code.
Once you click install, it will open VSCode and install the extension.

• On VS Code, go to View -> Command Palette.
• Select Q#: Install project templates (This would install Q# templates on your VS Code)

Congratulations, you now have QDK installed and can now start your journey into the world of quantum computing.

Creating a Quantum Hello World App

• On VSCode, go to View -> Command Palette.
• Select Q#: Create New Project
• Select Standalone console application. Select a folder where you’d want the project created and click on Create Project. Note that this might take some time to run on your first try as VS Code might be trying to download the complete QD Kits to your local machine.
• Open the project you just created. In the Program.qs file you would see something like:

This code prints “Hello quantum world!”

• In the terminal, typedotnet run This command would attempt to run the program. It might take a while to compile especially on your first try.

You should see “Hello quantum world!” printed in the terminal

At this point, you should go grab some beer cos you just successfully ran a quantum simulation program on your machine. Yea, it's a big deal. 😎

Find the sample repository here: https://github.com/seunzone/quantum-hello-world

Building Quantum Algorithms

To build quantum solutions could be somewhat complex as it might require understanding some theoretical knowledge of quantum mechanics such as superposition and quantum entanglement.

In addition to using Q# to building quantum models, you can either use python or C# as your quantum driver.

I would not be covering these concepts in this article. I would recommend a course by Chuck Bates on Pluralsight titled Quantum Computing: Getting Started with Q#. Chuck is a very talented physicist, software developer, and tutor.

You can also check out Microsoft’s Documentation if you’d love to dive further on how you can develop quantum models and algorithms.