I would still learn at least basics of TCP and IP, so that you are aware e.g. what firewalls do and how this shows up on the client side (vs when nothing is lis

I would still learn at least basics of TCP and IP, so that you are aware e.g. what firewalls do and how this shows up on the client side (vs when nothing is listening on the port but the port is otherwise open), what private IP ranges are, or what a timeout look like. These are the basics which are going to be extremely relevant when you start troubleshooting. Especially if they slap a docker image on their VPS. There's a frightening number of people who can't tell DNS resolution failure from a timeout, think they are going to get HTTP 500 if server breaks the connection, or don't take those failures into account (and it shows up in how they design their code).