Is Your Quantum Program Bug-Free?
This addresses debugging challenges for programmers and researchers in quantum computing, but it is incremental as it builds on existing classical methods.
The paper tackles the problem of debugging quantum programs by analyzing which classical debugging tactics can be adopted and identifying quantum-specific issues that require novel techniques, enabling practitioners to apply some tactics and highlighting research opportunities.
Quantum computers are becoming more mainstream. As more programmers are starting to look at writing quantum programs, they face an inevitable task of debugging their code. How should the programs for quantum computers be debugged? In this paper, we discuss existing debugging tactics, used in developing programs for classic computers, and show which ones can be readily adopted. We also highlight quantum-computer-specific debugging issues and list novel techniques that are needed to address these issues. The practitioners can readily apply some of these tactics to their process of writing quantum programs, while researchers can learn about opportunities for future work.