Quantum Computing is a Paradigm Shift-Time to Get Involved! [From the Editor]

• Published in: IEEE software Vol. 42; no. 5; pp. 4 - 7
• Main Author: Eldh, Sigrid
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Alamitos IEEE 01.09.2025; IEEE Computer Society
• Subjects: Quantum computers; Quantum computing; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 0740-7459; 1937-4194
• DOI: 10.1109/MS.2025.3579852

The ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) celebrated its 50th year in May 2025, and while I was there, I was fortunate to listen to Michael Hilton (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA), who suggested that, currently, the uncertainty of flaky tests was like the uncertainty of quantum computers. How should we handle this uncertainty or nondeterminism? Flaky tests are tests that give different results when executing the test suite, though the software has not changed. The comparison might not be exactly right, but it has a degree of similarity. Quantum can only solve quantum-framed problems, and not NP-complete problems (i.e., the hardest problems to be verified quickly). On the other hand, there are many published works examining flaky tests in quantum,1,2 as there is uncertainty in the results, even if the causes are rather different.