italian
collegiate
programming
contest
This year's ITACPC edition will not take place.
Dear ITACPC community,
We write to you after five years of competitions, stimulating problems, satisfactions, and a beautiful growth that has seen countless students and enthusiasts put themselves to the test in competitive programming.
Today we are writing to inform you that this year's edition of ITACPC will not take place.
Organizing a competition of this level requires a complex organizational machine and constant commitment. Unfortunately, the combination of two main factors leads us to make a pause for reflection:
- Human resources and volunteers: the organization relies on the work of a team of volunteers. This year we were not able to reach the number of people needed to guarantee the standard and care that an event like ITACPC deserves.
- The impact of Artificial Intelligence in online contests: the evolution of AI tools makes it extremely easy today to be guided in solving problems remotely. In a fully online format, it becomes increasingly difficult to value and compare transparently the work of those who solve tasks completely independently and on their own.
What does the future hold for ITACPC?
This is not a definitive goodbye, but a moment of transition. We are evaluating the possibility of reorganizing the competition in the future, rethinking it entirely in person, following the path of established formats such as SWERC and ICPC. A live event would not only guarantee fairness in the contest, but would also allow all of us to meet again and experience the true spirit of the competitive programming community.
We want to sincerely thank all the sponsors, problem setters, testers, and each of you who participated in and supported ITACPC over these 5 years.
We will continue to keep you updated through our Telegram channel and this website.
See you soon,
The ITACPC Team
About ITACPC
The ITACPC is a team-based programming competition between Universities on a national-scale. It is inspired by the well-known ICPC competition, which is instead of global scale.
If you never participated in a similar competition, click here to see a sample problem
The competition contains typically around 10 problems, with varying degrees of difficulty. The available time to solve them is usually 4 hours.
Why participate?
Quoting from the "Mission" statement of ICPC:
The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) provides college students with opportunities to interact with students from other universities and to sharpen and demonstrate their problem-solving, programming, and teamwork skills. The contest provides a platform for industry, and academia to encourage and focus public attention on the next generation of computing professionals as they pursue excellence.
In a similar way, the ITACPC aims to provide opportunities to students of Italian universities by having them compete on a national level. The winner team will be the Italian Champion in programming.
How to participate?
We recommend finding some fellow students who are also interested in participating (and that you get along with! 😄) and then use the registration form on this website to form a team. A few hours before the start of a contest, each member of your team will receive the username and password which you will use to access the contest platform and submit your solutions.
How does ITACPC relate to SWERC?
SWERC is one of the different regional phases of the aforementioned ICPC competition. In order to qualify for ICPC, an Italian team must first win the SWERC competition.
ITACPC is similar to SWERC because it's aimed at a "subset" of Universities, like SWERC. Participating or not participating in ITACPC has no direct consequence on the possibility of participating to SWERC. In fact, each university should choose whether to participate in SWERC or not, and which teams to sponsor and send to compete in SWERC.
If an Italian University wishes to participate to SWERC, then it would surely be reasonable to use ITACPC as an opportunity to put its teams to the test, using the ITACPC ranking as a helpful tool to select which teams are the best of the University and thus deserve to go to SWERC.