Maryam Tavassoli Sabzevari

Maryam Tavassoli Sabzevari, Arif Ali Khan

Quantum computing (QC) is increasingly transitioning toward practical and industrial adoption, highlighting the need to understand how developers engage with quantum technologies. In this study, we analyze 1,404 Stack Overflow posts related to quantum computing topics, including quantum programming, tools, and algorithms, to investigate real-world developer discussions. Using topic modeling and quantitative analysis, we identify the main discussion topics, their popularity, and the tools, programming languages, and quantum algorithms referenced by practitioners. We further assess the difficulty of developer questions using two metrics: (i) the percentage of questions without accepted answers and (ii) the median time required to receive an accepted answer. Our findings reveal seven main topics, with hybrid quantum--classical computing and quantum circuit implementation emerging as the most prevalent. We observe that Qiskit and Q-sharp dominate developer discussions, while Grover's and Shor's algorithms are the most frequently referenced. Moreover, our analysis highlights differences in engagement and difficulty across topics, tools, and algorithms, indicating varying levels of maturity and community support. These findings provide actionable insights for researchers, tool developers, and educators, supporting improvements in usability, documentation, and learning resources in quantum software engineering. To support transparency and reproducibility, the open-source dataset used in this study is publicly available at Zenodo.

Boshuai Ye, Peng Liang, Maryam Tavassoli Sabzevari et al.

Empirical quantum-software papers often report that one compiler, optimizer, backend, or ansatz outperforms another. Such comparisons are not properties of a tool alone: they can change with benchmark scope, circuit construction, compilation, sampling, backend or noise assumptions, optimizer choices, and resource budgets. Existing testing, benchmarking, and reproducibility methods help assess programs, tools, executions, and platforms, but they do not directly audit whether the reported comparison itself is supported by the evidence exposed in the source paper or accompanying materials. We present CLAIMSTAB-QC, a source-bounded framework for auditing empirical comparisons in quantum software. Given a reported comparison, the framework records the baselines, metric, relation, and admissible evidence; locks the comparison design before outcomes are computed; and reports either a scoped relation outcome or an explicit evidence boundary. For strict scalar-directional comparisons, the reported direction is classified as Sustained, Unresolved, or Reversed within the locked audit scope. We evaluate CLAIMSTAB-QC on 455 comparative claims from 119 quantum-software papers. The central finding is a materialization gap: 175 claims can be represented for audit planning, 79 become scalar-directional planning records, 53 yield lockable audit or diagnostic designs, and only 8 expose enough matched evidence to audit the original comparison without proxy reconstruction. These 8 records yield 2 Sustained, 4 Unresolved, and 2 Reversed outcomes. Controlled diagnostics over 24 benchmark-relevant comparisons further show that simpler checks can preserve apparent directions whose support weakens under locked audit designs.

Matteo Esposito, Maryam Tavassoli Sabzevari, Boshuai Ye et al.

Quantum computing, albeit readily available as hardware or emulated on the cloud, is still far from being available in general regarding complex programming paradigms and learning curves. This vision paper introduces $Classi|Q\rangle$, a translation framework idea to bridge Classical and Quantum Computing by translating high-level programming languages, e.g., Python or C++, into a low-level language, e.g., Quantum Assembly. Our idea paper serves as a blueprint for ongoing efforts in quantum software engineering, offering a roadmap for further $Classi|Q\rangle$ development to meet the diverse needs of researchers and practitioners. $Classi|Q\rangle$ is designed to empower researchers and practitioners with no prior quantum experience to harness the potential of hybrid quantum computation. We also discuss future enhancements to $Classi|Q\rangle$, including support for additional quantum languages, improved optimization strategies, and integration with emerging quantum computing platforms.