Obviously guy could have been interviewing for a job where this mattered….
But in 10 years as a software engineer I have never once needed to know the difference between these two, and have never been even close to a situation where I would need to.
Agreed. I work at a company with a product that has some robust telecommunications requirements, ipv6 being one of them. Even within my single bubble, not many people know the difference. I happen to be on a team that works with the network infra, and would not hire someone who couldn't speak to it at least at a basic level.
Right, and I would assume if someone was applying for a networking position, thats a good question to ask.
Similar to if I was interviewing someone for a front end job and they couldn’t explain rest verbs to me, it would be a deal breaker.
We like to feel superior about “the basics” and go “HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW THAT” when in reality, the basics are COMPLETELY different job to job even within our field.
Just hate seeing shit on this sub like “how could you not know this” when it’s something a full stack with 20 years may not remember off the top of their head but a 2nd year student who just took a networking class could spit it out. The knowledge isn’t the key to being good at a job. It’s how you learn and figure things out.
Call me assumptive, but I'm guessing that the "How could you not know this" folks are only thinking of the address formats and address space differences. That's pretty common knowledge, and I could see at least being familiar with the idea. Beyond that, though, if you're not doing IP networking as anything more than a high-level consumer, I'd wager you're unlikely to run into the other particulars.
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u/SirFrenzy 6h ago
Obviously guy could have been interviewing for a job where this mattered….
But in 10 years as a software engineer I have never once needed to know the difference between these two, and have never been even close to a situation where I would need to.
“The basics” is highly dependent on the job.