In my experience, no, you can't assume a first-year CS student knows that. You can't even assume CS grads who've been working for 10 years know that, or remembe

In my experience, no, you can't assume a first-year CS student knows that. You can't even assume CS grads who've been working for 10 years know that, or remember it if they did. You're right that it isn't rocket science, but it's more down in the weeds now than ever before. As somebody who works on operating systems, I share your disappointment that it's not common knowledge, but it really is trivia insofar as it's related to the sorts of things that most working programmers do these days. However, I do not share your disappointment that somebody had the nerve to write a perfectly fine article about something you already knew about. How dare they! How will you ever deal with the shame you feel on their behalf? These are truly tragic days we live in. :)