Worth noting he did not perform the "major feat of software engineering" like the OP says (given 256k ram or lower). He just put all the words into a hash. The main key is knowing about edit distance, if you know that, you can probably write the solution.

So yes he's very talented, but if you study enough computer science, you can also do it. Or don't. It's totally fine to be interested in other parts of engineering instead.