This is false and ageist. I got a computer engineering degree at a non elite state school very recently and this was covered in the first c++ and c classes. For that matter c# has an “out” variable that mimics this functionality, and the intro Java class covered primitive types vs. reference types. While reference types in Java aren’t the exact same thing, they do allow a void function to modify the state of the caller by modifying a parameter passed to the function.

What are you on about? Java, Python, Ruby, C#, JavaScript, most languages used to day have reference semantics for objects.

I don't believe this. Almost all mainstream languages use pass-by-reference by default. Java, python, javascript all pass objects by reference.

At one interview, as a joke at the end, the set of interviewers asked me if I could write code to reverse a string. I replied, "In place, or...?" which apparently confused some of them.