I've spoken with him a bit over perhaps the last year while he graduated from high school and enrolled at CMU. I've always seen him to be very interested in pro

I've spoken with him a bit over perhaps the last year while he graduated from high school and enrolled at CMU. I've always seen him to be very interested in programming languages, semantics, compilation. It's completely unsurprising to me that now that he's at CMU he has the opportunity to dig in (even) more deeply and produce this kind of stuff. I'm not sure what you find terrifying about it. He's put in probably 3-4 years of work in this topical area already and the world is such that today there are plenty of high-quality resources to help you learn this material—free, online—if you have the drive. His age is perhaps a little surprising, but ultimately immaterial.