On the 46th and 47th International Collegiate Programming Contests (ICPC), which had been held since April 14 for six days at Luxor, Egypt, Soongsilians successfully represented Korea. The ICPC, based at Balyor University, is the world’s largest university programming competition held annually by its foundation. Among approximately 60,000 competitors from over 150 international universities, the Korean teams LongestPathtoWF and NLP placed 24th and 118th, respectively. Soongsilians were ranked 46th.
Here’s the brief history of ICPC. In 1977, US and Canada came up with an idea from a college programming contest that had been held at Texas A&M University in 1970. Then, many countries started to hold their own programming competitions, and, in 1989, the ICPC foundation introduced an expanded version that was international in scale. The number of participants in ICPC 2017 reached 46,381, which is about four times of the Rio Olympics.’ This means ICPC is a quite honorable and important position for colleges specializing in Information Technology (IT) to show their competence and make up for their weaknesses.
ICPC places great importance in creativity, teamwork, and innovation. It also encourages colleges to show their skills as much as possible even under pressure. Moreover, one team can use only one computer so teamwork becomes more important than any other competition. The ranks are decided by the deduction speed of resolution, accuracy, etc.
These days, the IT education in SSU serves high-quality lectures and many opportunities to Soongsilians. According to the speed of development of the fourth industrial revolution, it would be a major help for SSU to provide Soongsilians high-quality, globalized education.
