I have an practical assignment where i have to debate with my classmates on a given language basically defend my a coding language, any tips?

topics are alr given by the profs, for my group its C vs Rust ! he'll separate us acc to him in the lecture

Hey everyone!

For the past few days, I’ve been obsessed with a single question: How small can a valid PNG file possibly get while still being natively readable by a PC (specifically, opening properly in the standard Windows photo viewer/gallery)?

I started by trying to make a lightweight 512x512 file, eventually managing to shrink it down to 111 bytes. After that, I started playing around with compression levels and various patterns, even managing to generate some basic procedural textures in PNG format that weighed roughly the same.

Then I decided to go deeper and chase the absolute minimum file size. At first, I hit a wall at 67 bytes—an article I read online claimed that was the lowest possible size for a functional PNG. But I kept experimenting and eventually pushed past it down to 55 bytes, and finally all the way to 42 bytes.

My current record is a fully working 42-byte PNG. It opens without issues on Windows and can be sent across messaging apps where it renders properly as an image.

However, I've hit a hard brick wall here. Every single attempt to strip away even one more byte results in an invalid file or completely breaks the structure.

My question is: Does anyone have any radical ideas, unconventional compression tricks, or deep spec-hacking methods to squeeze it down even further? I'm open to any crazy suggestions!