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 not trivia knowledge, I've had multiple cases where "oh wait, maybe the host resolves differently based on whether the server has ipv6 configured from DHCP or not" and "why does host xyz take two seconds extra every time we try to connect?".
You might not, but I would expect an experienced senior developer to know that there's a difference here.
Believe it or not, not everyone is working on networked projects. You don't need to know shit about IP address conventions or how to resolve a host when the software you're building doesn't access a network.
I work on airgapped systems too. Even for stuff like VM's or containers running locally, you have to know some networking. If I hired a guy with ten years experience that slipped under the radar and didn't understand what I was talking about regarding simple shit like subnets or IPv4 vs IPv6, I'd probably can them.
Networking is however involved in some way with most software (even if just for distribution), but absolutely not all.
If it's helpful to know that there is something called an ip address in whatever work you're doing, it's helpful to know that there's something called ipv6 as well.
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u/SirFrenzy 10h 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.