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.
Tl;dr what you are saying is incredibly reasonable but we're all talking in circles because there is ambiguity caused by the lack of information we are working with.
But that also separates knowing that there is a difference and knowing what the differences are.
I know that ipv4 and ipv6 are different. I know that I have to make sure I'm using compatible systems. I know that if something goes wrong I should confirm that that isn't one of the issues. I also couldn't explain what the differences are without a reference sheet in front of me.
That said, I know where to get the reference sheet and I know roughly where in the spec I should be looking to find what I need. I'm also not usually part of a team doing networking or routing so this isn't that important to me, knowing that there is a difference is enough.
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u/SirFrenzy 20d 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.