I am Ruan Schoeman. I am seventeen years old and in high school. I am almost completely self-educated in programming and IT, being homeschooled since grade six. I’ve been passionate about programming and computers as far back as I can remember, starting out with the Scratch programming language when I was still in preschool.

As a result of my years of teaching myself to program and to use computers, I was awarded overall winner in the category Computer Science and Information Technology, at the Eskom Science Expo in 2018. Thereafter I won a bronze medal in 2020 for the Programming Olympiad at the age of fourteen, along with a silver medal in the Applications Olympiad.
I have now won first place in the Applications Olympiad for two years running (2022 & 2023). I’ve also consistently placed in the final round of the Programming Olympiad since 2020.

However, despite appearances, I don’t spend all my time in front of a computer. I also practice Karate and play the piano, and I am passionate about languages — computer and human. Besides that I am also active at Scouts as a Patrol Leader in my Troop. After school I plan to do a computer science degree. I also do part-time consulting at a startup IT business, that does business intelligence for SMEs.