[twelve40]

I ask basic questions in my interviews to see if a person is even aware of GC and potential for object leaks in dynamic languages. We have a pretty standard webapp with a handful of backend services, not HFT, but we did have clueless interns write leaky code that wasted memory and crashed, and I don't need that to happen again, so yes, when a webapp programmer cannot even recall the term garbage collection that's not a great sign for me.

I'm additionally amazed at people who show up at the interview sometimes claiming C and/or C++ experience (completely not required for the role, but hey, they do claim that experience) but then seem to be completely unaware of any basics of memory management.