My story: how I got here
How I found myself here
In August 2018, as a Computer Applications student at APENA TVET School, I took an internship at Icyumba Mpahabwenge, a stationery shop, because it had something I did not have at home: a computer with internet. Between printing and serving customers I watched web development tutorials and learned PHP on an old copy of XAMPP, and by November I had built my first working system, a stock inventory. Near the end I was asked to type a whole year of the shop's records into Excel. I did the data entry, but the real problem was that the shop could not see where its money went, so I turned the spreadsheet into an income and expense tracker. The shop waived my intern contribution for it, and the manager told me, "I am seeing something in you, keep it up." It was the first time I understood that what I build can matter to someone else's work.
From Excel to real software
In 2019, at Musamvu TVET School, teachers were making report cards largely by hand. They already used Excel, so I built the report system inside Excel, and the school agreed to pay half of my school fees for it. That workbook became the specification for RASMS (Roger's Advanced School Management System): a web application I presented to the parents' meeting on 8 February 2020, bringing marks, discipline, permissions, finance and SMS to parents into one system. When schools reopened after COVID it had to run without internet, so I packaged it as a Windows installer, and in January 2023 it went online. The school has used it since February 2020.
From one maintainer to a team
For the offline releases I was the only maintainer, and I fixed crashes overnight. That showed me the limit of working alone. In October 2022 I registered HDEV TECH Ltd, and much of my work since has been built with teams in national competitions and hackathons. Along the way I earned an Advanced Diploma in Information Technology with First Class from Rwanda Polytechnic, Tumba College, then completed a BTech in Information Technology there, defending my capstone on 12 June 2026. I am now waiting for graduation.