- -- in that jacket.
- Okay, so this is just nonsense.
you can't just clean up an image or look at something --
- This is a tough topic to teach in class.
It's an important thing to talk about especially
when we're going to have a problem set that relates to images.
Much like we talked about earlier in the context of photography,
but that doesn't really fit.
It fits in as much as you talk about structures.
- It's another one of those blue boxes in the textbook.
Where like, hey everyone, here is a slightly related topic,
but it's not part of the explicit narrative.
The way we justify it ultimately is we want
to introduce structs as a stepping stone to more sophisticated data structures
all together.
And structs are particularly nice because file in C
is a nice data structure underneath the hood.
A data type in fact, in this case.
And then we want to be able for the problem set to play
with the world of forensics and images.
And so it's always a bit of a stilted thing.
But at least the approach we've taken here
and with cryptography and with a couple of other examples
we'll encounter in the semester, is at least
putting them at the end of the lecture.
Kind of as like, the set up, for what's ahead for students
to whet their appetite and give them a sense of excitement
for what's on the horizon.
So hopefully that makes it work.
But I do think this kind of material could potentially even stand on its own
and not be part of the lecture per se, but the setup of a certain problem.
But even then --
- But it doesn't have enough weight to hold up on its own as an independent --
like, you couldn't have a lecture on this.
There's only so much.
- Not to the extent that we cover it, I think.
Especially since so much of it is then introduced in a hands on way
through the problem set itself.
- But I think when we do get to this point in the course, when
we are talking about images and representation,
I personally consider this to be a big pivot point for us.
We've now gone from a world where all the programs you're writing are,
you know, the game of 15 isn't even a game
but it's still a text based environment.
Now we're actually starting working with and manipulate images, which is what
we've been hinting at for a long time.
- And I love this abstraction too.
Before this disappears. the zeros and ones mapping nicely to an image,
albeit a one bit colorful image.
It's pretty cool.
- And it's not too much of a stretch to then twist this into,
when we show this as red.
And we can reintroduce the concept of pixels and structures for triples.
Because we need three bytes to represent a pixel on a bitmap.
One for red, one for green, one for blue.
- Absolutely.
And this is really also a delivery mechanism at the end of the day for all
the silly enhanced videos that are on the internet from TV and Hollywood
films where, if you look closely enough --
And this is by far the worst side effect of taking and intro
for a computer science course, it ruins all of TV and movies for you.
Because any time there is a hacker or some computer threat,
it's usually something silly on the screen.
- You've got to freeze frame it and pick it apart,
and you'll find something goofy.
- The Simpsons does this justice, right?
Any time you pause on a frame of the Simpsons
there's always some clever Easter egg there.
There's something on the screen.
But in Hollywood is one of the examples we show,
it's just like a crayon drawing application
when it's supposed to be someone hacking into your system.
- Yeah
- It's just not the same.
Mr. Robot, I will say, comes closer.
But even that, I just can't get into it in the way
that some people perhaps can.
Then again, I get really into Chicago Med.
I used to really like ER and my doctor friends hate that.
- So seriously, if you're looking for --
- What goes around comes around.
- If you're ever looking for resources of bad computer science,
just turn to Hollywood.
They will be more than happy to give you some --
- Thank you for saying Hollywood and not CS50.
- Some great tips.