Teaching Quantum Computing with the QuIDE Simulator

Abstract Recently, the idea of quantum computation is becoming more and more popular and there are many attempts to build quantum computers. Therefore, there is a need to introduce this topic to regular students of computer science and engineering. In this paper we present a concept of a course powered by the Quantum Integrated Development Environment (QuIDE), the new quantum computer simulator that joins features of GUI based simulators with inter- preters and simulation library approach. The idea of the course is to put together theoretical aspects with practical assignments realized on the QuIDE simulator. Such an approach enables studying a variety of topics in a way understandable for this category of students. The topics of the course included understanding the concept of quantum gates, registers and a series of algorithms: Deutsch and Bernstein-Vazirani Problems, Grover's Fast Database Search, Shor's Prime Factorization, Quantum Teleportation and Quantum Dense Coding. We describe results of QuIDE assessment during the course; our solution scored more points in System Usability Scale survey then the other tool previously used for that purpose. We also show that the most useful features of such a tool indicated by students are similar to the assumptions made on the simulator functionality.