“It was still looking at how texts speak to what they mean and what it means for a document to be about something,” he said. “To me, the main switch was moving from a philosophical lens to a more mathematical one. It all fits together in my head somehow.”

On top of his skillsets in language and computers, Efron has fixed up guitars since he was a teenager.

“It started out when I was in high school. We just never had any money, so we always called it ‘Frankenstein-ing’ guitars up,” he said. “We would take pieces from one and another, and it always started with repair work and improving what instruments we could afford.”

Although he can’t remember when he made his first guitar from scratch, it’s been an enduring hobby ever since.

“It was not so different from the way I learned how to code,” he said. “I was just doing it and you sort of start with easy problems and slowly work your way up to more ambitious stuff.”