My attitude is: I learn whatever I need to learn to get things done.
And for a long time, I've just never needed to learn about how many bits were in a byte.
The only time I've ever needed to deal with individual bits in Java was when I was working with flags or parsing binary formats. Both of which are extremely rare when doing generic server dev.
You can even do rudimentary binary reverse engineering without any knowledge of bits. I remember running programs through a disassembler, looking for offending JMPs and then patching them out in a hex editor with 0x90.
Not having knowledge is not a problem as long as you know that you are missing that knowledge.
And for a long time, I've just never needed to learn about how many bits were in a byte.
The only time I've ever needed to deal with individual bits in Java was when I was working with flags or parsing binary formats. Both of which are extremely rare when doing generic server dev.
You can even do rudimentary binary reverse engineering without any knowledge of bits. I remember running programs through a disassembler, looking for offending JMPs and then patching them out in a hex editor with 0x90.
Not having knowledge is not a problem as long as you know that you are missing that knowledge.