Published research suggests that 150 to 200 logical qubits could make quantum chemistry useful, and several hardware roadmaps aim for that range within a few years. Daniel Volz argues that the bottleneck then shifts to software. His team at BASF found 130-something use cases, and by his rough estimate only 1,000 to 2,000 people worldwide can program quantum circuits. He explains why he thinks coding agents won't close that gap in the near term. Circuits, he says, are 'almost assembler level,' so domain experts need an abstraction layer above them.

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