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qdk
Rust2023–2026
microsoft / qdk

qdk

Microsoft Quantum Development Kit, including the Q# programming language, resource estimator, and Quantum Katas

Developer ToolsLanguages & CompilersLearning & ReferenceScience & Engineering
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4Distinct people
7Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Microsoft Quantum Development Kit, including the Q# programming language, resource estimator, and Quantum Katas

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year7 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2023-06-21 18:50:09 UTC to 2026-04-06 12:31:00 UTC.

01232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments20232024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20242025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

7 sources
billti·Mar 7, 2025
I work on the quantum developer tools team at Microsoft. We put a lot of work into what we call the Quantum Katas to learn the basics via coding - https://quantum.microsoft.com/en-us/tools/quantum-katas Our VS Code extension is trivial to install (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/quantum/install-over...) or just try it entirely in the browser with Visual Studio Code online (https://vscode.dev/quantum/playground/) To support that last scenario, where the language service, debugger, simulator, even package references, can run entirely in the browser, we built the whole thing using Rust compiled to WebAssembly, and our VS Code extension runs as pure JavaScript and Wasm. If interested you can dig into the implementation at https://github.com/microsoft/qsharp . Happy to answer any questions!
In Why Quantum Engineering Is Emerging as a Distinct Industrial Sector
billti·Dec 9, 2024
If you're a software engineer, then the Quantum Katas might fit your learning style. The exercises use Q#, which is quantum specific programming language. https://quantum.microsoft.com/en-us/tools/quantum-katas The first few lessons do cover complex numbers and linear algebra, so skip ahead if you want to get straight to the 'quantum' coding, but there's really no escaping the math if you really want to learn quantum. Disclaimer: I work in the Azure Quantum team on our Quantum Development Kit (https://github.com/microsoft/qsharp) - including Q#, the Katas, and our VS Code extension. Happy to answer any other questions on it.
In Willow, Our Quantum Chip
billti·Mar 21, 2024
Shameless plug: But these types of areas of research (what types of problems can quantum computers solve and when) has been a big focus of our open-source Q# effort lately. You can see our last two blog posts (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/qsharp/) are about the resource estimation features we've recently built for exactly this purpose. You can give them a try pretty easily in VS Code or just in the browser (https://aka.ms/AQ/RE/Docs) Disclaimer: I work on the Q# project (https://github.com/microsoft/qsharp) in a team under Matthias Troyer (quoted in the article). Entirely personal option: I do think tempering some of the hype of the past few years/decades and focusing on the areas of highest potential is in general a good thing. Progress hasn't been what some optimists had hoped for, but hardware has been progressing quite quickly & con
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sistently for years now, and I'm confident we'll get there eventually.
In Actual Uses for Near-Term Quantum Computers
billti·Jul 17, 2023
(disclaimer: I work on the team developing Q# and its tooling) That's part of the goal of Q#. It's designed to be a language which allows you to build up from quantum gates, efficiently work with quantum concepts such as 'adjoint' and 'controlled' operations, and build that up into a higher level of abstraction. You can see an old post as to some of the reasoning when it was first developed at <https://devblogs.microsoft.com/qsharp/why-do-we-need-q/>. Another consideration to some of the points raised here, is that even on today's state-of-the-art hardware you typically only get a couple thousand gates at best before noise overwhelms the system and the qubits 'decohere' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence). So you do often want to develop at a level where you can squeeze every last gate out of whatever program you're writin
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g. (If you intend to run it on a quantum computer and not just simulations). Being that the post is about quantum simulation, you can see the one our team built in Rust at https://github.com/qir-alliance/qir-runner/blob/main/sparses... . This uses 'sparse' simulation, which means any state with a probability of 0 isn't tracked, which turns out to be quite a few in a lot of algorithms. This allows you to simulate many more qubits than you can with a full state simulator (where you need to track 2^n states for n qubits). It also does some other nifty tricks where you can elide or combine gates before they are performed to get even more perf. We use it in our new Q# stack (https://github.com/microsoft/qsharp) to run program simulations in our CLI or in the browser (such as on our new https://quantum.microsoft.com site), or inside VS Code (desktop or web)). We are looking to evolve the Q# language and improve the quantum development experience, with a focus given to a 'scalable' quantum future where gate count and noise is less of a limit, and moving development higher up in abstraction - as you outline. So if it is something you have an interest in, we're more than happy to get the input on the qsharp GitHub repo linked to above.
In A tutorial quantum interpreter in 150 lines of Lisp

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