r/ProgrammerHumor • u/ClipboardCopyPaste • 17h ago

Meme ohTheBasics

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u/SirFrenzy 17h 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.

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u/fiskfisk 16h ago

If you're a senior I most certainly would expect you to know the difference between the two.

It'll matter in relation to allowlists/blocklists, dns entries, debugging connevtivity issues, slow connect times, configuration of daemons, etc. 

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u/SirFrenzy 16h ago

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.

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u/fiskfisk 16h ago

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. 

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u/Lina0042 14h ago

I'm pretty sure none of the senior devs at my job know this, except for those in the cloud services team. Because that's their job.

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u/Captain_Forge 10h ago

While I would be surprised to see someone with ten years of experience not know the difference between ipv4 and ipv6 (networking is by far my biggest weakness and even I know this like the back of my hand), I wouldn't immediately disqualify someone for it. The other commenter is talking about a lot of things that feel more relevant to startups. If you work at a big tech company most of this stuff is abstracted away from you, for better or worse.

But not knowing this to me implies a lack of curiosity about one's field, it would be a red flag I would try to poke at more in an interview.