Classical Computer Vision — Features Before Deep Learning
Before neural networks, computer vision spent decades building an ingenious toolkit: detect edges, find corners, describe local patches, match features across images. These classical methods are no longer state of the art for recognition, but they're far from obsolete — they still power real systems, they illuminate what deep learning automated, and understanding them makes you a better vision engineer. This post covers how vision worked before deep learning, and why it still matters.
Before neural networks, vision hand-engineered features: edges, corners, invariant descriptors (SIFT). These still power matching, panorama stitching, and 3D/SLAM — and reveal exactly what CNNs later automated. Their ceiling on recognition is what the deep-learning breakthrough overcame.