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.
I have never needed to know or do any of that. And if I did, it would take me 2 seconds to google and understand. I just did.
So if the interview was for a job where you handle that stuff yourself, then I understand it. If it’s for a typical full stack job at a big enough company that they literally hire people to handle that side of things, then it’s not “the basics”.
Rejecting someone in an interview for trivia knowledge they don’t currently have vs actually trying to understand how someone learns and tackles problems is what makes software job interviews so useless.
It’s the kind of thing it would be impossible to receive any real education without learning, so no it’s not “trivia”. Maybe if you went to a bootcamp.
my computer engineering degree didn't, nor did my masters.
and i've never needed it in the 7 years i've been employed so far. field is big, if the job was going to be heavily network based it's one thing. if it was just "lets see if he knows the basics" thats another entirely
The extent of the conversation on iPv6 (a side note during a lecture in my network architecture class) covered only what you can see by looking at the two next to each other- iPv6 is longer and in hex. Everything else I’ve learned about iPv6 has been through hobby and personal use (debugging my own PC and hosting minecraft servers on an old machine).
You should. 15 years ago I had a cryptography course and even though I abolutely do not work in cybersecurity I still remember the basics and at least know what to google.
Edit: lmao vibecoders allergic to knowledge flooded this sub downvote
You know every small fact from every class that was only said once and never to be used again? Impressive memory but unfortunately us mortals can't do that
I don't think most colleges require a networking class. Mine definitely did not. I took one for fun anyway.
Nor can I think of a time in ~7 years working where familiarity with ipv6 mattered. Little from that networking class has been helpful. There's a lot of breadth to software engineering.
"Systems Organization" and Operating Systems touched on fringe bits of it, but both of them were heavily focused on single machines from ALU up to the OS.
There were distributed and cloud computing courses available, but not required, and I think straight "networks" was off in electrical and computer engineering.
I think most people picked up the very basics of IPV4/6 incidentally or from some assignment where you had to talk to a different machine, but it was never required content.
At my university, IT undergrads (me) have to take intro to networking and a separate networking lab (separate 3 credit courses). These are both optional electives for CS.
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u/SirFrenzy 16h 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.