Very similar experience to me. I grew up in the 90s in a suburb of Dallas, TX. The most interesting things we did in elementary school was play Oregon Trail on Apple IIe and make obnoxious sounds in Kid Pix once we upgraded to iMacs. In High School, a CS curriculum existed but hardly any interest or marketing the AP CS classes were made. HTML and web development classes started to make its way in late 90s.
Thank you for your refreshing point of view. I'm a mid-level software developer and I was on the other side of the table as a junior web developer and encountered this same style of questioning and embraced it. This is my go-to style when interviewing because if you are confident in the lingo and zeitgeist of development, there is no way they can bullshit there way and lie through their teeth on their own experiences. It is very easy to tell. Whiteboarding doesn't give that detection since it is too broad of a spectrum to start as a indicator of experience.