[mynameisvlad]

How does knowing binary produce meaningfully better code? Most of us aren't working at a low enough level for it to be substantial.

You should be judging the code, not the person who wrote it.

[denton-scratch]

For nearly all of the software I rely on, I haven't examined the code. I'm not in a position to judge it.

For most of that software, of course, I'm not in a position to judge the developer either; but if all I know is that the developer isn't familiar with binary and hex, then I wouldn't expect her to be competent to write, for example, a brochure website, let alone a webserver. URL encoding depends on hex. Debugging often depends on hex. Arithmetic overflow and carry are binary. Twos-complement notation for signed integers is a binary convention.

I wouldn't hire a developer who couldn't explain binary notation. In fact I don't think I've ever met one like that.

As I suggested, perhaps I'm old-fashioned.