The South African IOI team for 2025 was recently announced and, 19 months after posting this blog entry, I am proud to say I achieved my goal!

If you really want something, go for it — even if it feels far off. Progress might be slow, and you'll hit walls:

• In 2023, I didn't even qualify for my country's national finals.

• In 2024, I got the exact required cutoff mark to qualify for the finals.

But I still tried :)

Congratulations to madamadam, DeathIsAwe, and clementinesparrow13 for also making the team. I'm looking forward to the contest in Bolivia!

Hey, I'm Nico.

I came across competitive programming about a year ago, but I never really took it seriously. I'm stepping it up a notch now though, aiming to represent South Africa in the IOI in 2024/25/26. I'm not completely sure how hard I'll need to work, but I know it's pretty hard, like a few hours a day most days consistently. It's been about a week now and I'm really loving the easier tasks. Now I've just got to learn some stuff and start doing harder things.

Next time I get a good idea of how close I am to making IOI is in around a year: August 2024. That's when SAPO happens. I'm aiming for top 4, I can already solve the first of the 3 problems in the 2020 past paper of the final round.

I just need to find the balance between coding and school work, but being in Grade 10 isn't too much pressure so it should be fine.

See you next time.