Software Engineering Education of Classical Computing vs. Quantum Computing: A Competency-Centric Approach

Abstract

An ever-increasing amount of tasks have become too complex to calculate with classical computers in reasonable time, such as molecular interactions or traffic optimizations. Quantum computing (QC) is currently one of the most promising approaches to handle those mentioned challenges. Based on the effects of quantum mechanics (e.g. superposition or entanglement), it may lead to a completely new range of solutions. This goes along with changes in software engineering (SE) and education. Therefore, students of computer science have to build up some new technical competencies in QC and surrounded fields (e.g. physics) to understand the characteristics of SE for QC. This paper identifies the target state, i.e. the required technical competencies that master students of computer science should have in this field of knowledge. In addition, it also analyzes the current state, i.e. the technical competencies that graduates of the bachelor's program in computer science have in relation to SE for QC. With a structured competence analysis, the competencies are collected, documented and compared. It shows that the current state does not correspond to the required target state and that further technical competencies are required. The analyses only relate to students at the University of Applied Sciences Kempten (Germany).