About The Arab Collegiate Programming Contest
The Arab Collegiate Programming Contest (ACPC) is a qualifying round for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). ACPC is organized in the same spirit and is governed by all applicable rules of the ICPC. Winners of an ACPC contest qualify to the ICPC World Finals. An ACPC Regional Contest is normally held during November/December of each year, whereas the ICPC World Final is held in March/April of the following year.
The 2010 Thirteenth Arab Collegiate Programming Contest (ACPC2010) will be hosted by The Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon in 24-26 November 2010.
The Arab Collegiate Programming Contest
The first Arab Collegiate Programming Contest (then called The Arab & North Africa Regional Contest (ANARC)) was hosted by Al Akhawayn University in 1998 thanks to the efforts of Mr. Sidi Ali Maelainin, then Associate Director for Development at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. Eight Universities from four countries participated in the first ANARC. Since then, the contest have witnessed significant participation. In 2007, 45 teams from 9 countries participated in the Tenth Regional Contest hosted by The Arab Academy for Science and Technology, Alexandria, Egypt. The 2005 contest (hosted by Kuwait University,) witnessed the largest participation as teams from 14 Arab countries. The last few years included teams from: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunis, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest
The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is organized and conducted yearly under the auspices of The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) . Started in 1970 at Texas A&M University, with the first World Finals held in 1977. The contest have then grown exponentially in the number of participating universities. In 2009/2010, 22,000 students from 1931 universities in 82 countries competed for the bragging rights of being the World's Programming Champions.
The ACM programming contest provides college students an opportunity to demonstrate and sharpen their problem solving and computing skills. The contest is a two-tiered competition among teams of students representing institutions of higher education. The winning teams of the regional contests advance to the contest finals. The 2011 World Finals will be held in Sharm El Shaikh, Egypt.
The Contest
The contest lasts for five hours. Students compete in teams against teams from other Universities. Each team is made of three students who pass the eligibility rules for the specific year. Each team has to solve a set of about ten problems using a single computer. Solutions involve writing program using C, C++, or JAVA. Team solutions' are run against a secret test data and their output are compared to that of a Judges' program. Teams are ranked based on the number of problems they manage to solve and the penalties they accumulate. Penalties reflect the time taken to solve a problem and the number of failed attempts. Contestants may bring reference materials such as books and manuals; but neither machine-readable versions nor electronic devices are allowed.
To get an idea on how to get contestants ready, including an archive of the problems previously used in ANARC and ICPC, go to this page. For more detailed information about the contest, check the RuleBook!