The International Collegiate Programming Contest, popularly known as ICPC, is a multi-tier, team-based programming competition among the universities of the world. Headquartered at Baylor University, the ICPC operates autonomous regional and national contests covering six continents, culminating in a global World Finals every year. In 2018, ICPC participation included 52,709 students from 3,233 universities in 110 countries.

ICPC fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure. Simply put, it is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world.

University of Computer Studies, Yangon hosted the 2019 Myanmar Collegiate Programming Contest (MCPC) – a national contest for students from Myanmar universities – on October 18, 2019. MCPC 2019 saw 85 teams – consisting of 255 contestants from 26 universities from across Myanmar – vying for the top prize. MIIT was represented at MCPC for the second time by a contingent of five teams – Alpha, CodeCipher, Dominators, Mad Lads, and Triforce. All the teams were coached by Daw Chit Nilar Win, Siddhartha Lal, and Usha Subramanian.

The MIIT teams put up an exceptional show at MCPC 2019, with CodeCipher and Alpha bagging the 2^nd and the 5^th rank respectively. These two teams are now eligible to participate in any of the regional contests in the Asia Pacific region. The other three teams were also all able to secure a top 30 rank. This stellar performance was the culmination of nearly 6 months of hard work put into this endeavour by the students and the faculty members.

Some of the students were participating in a programming contest for the first time and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. They learnt several new things and are excited about participating in the contest again next year. In the meanwhile, MIIT students will be getting a taste of programming in similar environments through the internal programming competition known as CodeMutants.

MIIT is barely 4 years old. The performance of its students is worthy of praise and commendation. We hope that the success of these 5 teams will inculcate a healthy programming culture at MIIT and inspire the next cohort of students which looks at programming not as something burdensome, but as something that is exciting, challenging, and innovative.