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From this question, I gathered that the main quantum computing programming languages are Q# and QISKit.

What other programming languages are available for programming quantum computers? Are there certain benefits to choosing particular ones?

EDIT: I am looking for programming languages, not emulators. Emulators simulate things. Programming languages are a method of writing instructions (either for real objects or for emulators). There may be a single language that works for multiple emulators and vice versa.

Sanchayan Dutta
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Pro Q
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7 Answers7

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Wikipedia list of Quantum Computer programming languages

(This answer is not a copy of that webpage, it's more updated and with verified links. In some cases the author's paper or website link is added.)

The website Quantum Computing Report has a Tools webpage listing over a dozen links, some new and some repeating the above list.

See also QuanTiki's webpage: "List of QC simulators", for a huge list of simulators and programming languages based on: C/C++, CaML, OCaml, F#, along with GUI based, Java, JavaScript, Julia, Maple, Mathematica, Maxima, Matlab/Octave, .NET, Perl/PHP, Python, Scheme/Haskell/LISP/ML and other online services providing calculators, compilers, simulators, and toolkits, etc.

Are there certain benefits to choosing particular ones?

If you plan on using a particular quantum computer then one would hope that the programming language developed by the manufacturer is both best suited for that particular machine and well supported.

Choosing a language with a larger following means that there are more Forums available and hopefully more bug fixes and support.

Unfortunately, that leaves some great niche products to struggle to gain a user base. Trying to find one language that is both powerful/expressive and supported across various platforms is the trick, the answer is an opinion ATM.

An evaluation of four software platforms: Forest (pyQuil), QISKit, ProjectQ, and the Quantum Developer Kit is offered by Ryan LaRose in "Overview and Comparison of Gate Level Quantum Software Platforms" (6 Jul 2018).

Updates:

Google's Cirq and OpenFermion-Cirq: "Google's AI Blog - Announcing Cirq: An Open Source Framework for NISQ Algorithms".

D-Wave's Leap and Ocean SDK allows access to a D-Wave 2000Q™ System in a cloud environment with access to a 2000+ qubit quantum annealing machine to test and run workloads for free, assuming the core algorithms used go into the open source pool. Apply to login at D-Wave's Leap In webpage.

Rigetti Computing's Quantum Cloud Service (QCS) offers a Quantum Machine Image, a virtualized programming, and execution environment that is pre-configured with Forest 2.0, to access up to 16 qubits of a 128 qubit computer.

Stay tuned for information on Fujitsu's Digital Annealer, an architecture capable of performing computations some 10,000 times faster than a conventional computer. If they eventually provide a development environment that is cross-compatible with true quantum computers these two paragraphs will remain in this answer, otherwise I will remove them.

While their silicon chip is not quantum in nature Fujitsu has partnered with 1Qbit to develop what is described as a "Quantum Inspired AI Cloud Service", whether their Digital Annealer quacks like a duck (anneals like a D-Wave, and uses compatible code) remains to be seen. Visit here to access the Fujitsu Digital Annealer Technical Service.

University of Pennsylvania's QWIRE (choir) is a quantum circuit language and formal verification tool, it has a GitHub webpage.

A review of: Cirq, Cliffords.jl, dimod, dwave-system, FermiLib, Forest (pyQuil & Grove), OpenFermion, ProjectQ, PyZX, QGL.jl, Qbsolv, Qiskit Terra and Aqua, Qiskit Tutorials, and Qiskit.js, Qrack, Quantum Fog, Quantum++, Qubiter, Quirk, reference-qvm, ScaffCC, Strawberry Fields, XACC, and finally XACC VQE is offered in the paper: "Open source software in quantum computing" (Dec 21 2018), by Mark Fingerhuth, Tomáš Babej, and Peter Wittek.

I will return to this answer from time to time to make updates, without excessive bumping.

R1-
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Rob
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Gate model hardware vendors have built out their own low level languages:

These have higher level python sdk's available:

Rigetti is also wrapping their language in a higher level library for calling pre-built applications called Grove.

Microsoft has developed Q# to run against their existing simulator, and eventually their physical hardware.

Since the languages above are vendor specific the main benefit is that you can run quantum programs on their computers.

Outside of the vendor specific languages is Scaffold which is being developed by Princeton researchers. This language is interesting as it includes a toolchain for analyzing the programs to determine costs, performance potential, and scalability potential.

Edit: Project Q is another framework that allows you to develop programs utilizing Python which can run on an included simulator.

Oak Ridge National Labs has started work on a project called XACC which is intended to abstract vendor specific code to allow users access to the various hardware platforms without duplicating code in each vendor specific language.

j4ustin
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Or even look at Quipper, a functional Quantum programming language. With monadic semantics, built in functionality for reversible quantum computation, hierarchical circuit support, and more! Used in actual practice too – for an algorithm to compute the solution of the Dirac equation by LaFlamme.

Glorfindel
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user3483902
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Silq is new high level Quantum Computing language. As quoted on their site: "Silq is a new high-level programming language for quantum computing with a strong static type system, developed at ETH Zürich."

Silq

Diadems
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Unfortunately, the list on Quantiki is pretty old and not well maintained. Even listing all quantum programming languages in a single reply to this question isn't sustainable since the quantum landscape is constantly evolving. For example, Google has just released Cirq, a new quantum programming framework for Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers which isn't featured in any of the above replies since it was announced only a couple of days ago.

To address this problem and as a response to another question on QC StackExchange I started a curated list of open-source software projects on GitHub which also includes a comprehensive overview of actively developed quantum programming languages and frameworks. The list is actively maintained by the community and we constantly add new projects.

Mark Fingerhuth
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I would include IBM's Composer. It doesn't feel like programming because you don't get all the bugs and errors and funtionality, but it clearly converts your instructions on gates into QASM and runs it on a real IBM simulator, or a real IBM quantum computer (the choice is the user's).

user1271772 No more free time
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Avery Leider
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Another language I suggest looking at is Qmod. It is a high-level quantum programming language, with both python embedding, and native Qmod syntax (via Classiq's web IDE, with visualization and execution on various simulators and hardware).

Disclaimer: I am a Classiq employee

Ori Opher
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