Most conferences I get to visit are about Java. Java frameworks, techniques, other JVM languages, all of them have pretty much the same focus. However: there is one conference on my agenda that is… different (in a good way!). Joy of Coding is all about (you’ve guessed it) the joy we experience while coding. The topics are very broad, some talks are technical, others are not.

Talking about game theory

At this edition of the Rotterdam-based conference I was invited to talk about game theory and game algorithms, and I explained this by going from a simple game, to noughts and crosses, to chess and finally to Go. From minimax to alpha-beta pruning to neural networks. It is the same talk as I did last week at Devoxx UK, but now I had much more time, 30 minutes. This allowed me to go deeper into the algorithms and for example explain the free optimization you get with alpha-beta pruning.

The absolute best thing about Joy of Coding? The logo/mascot! Just look at this extremely happy cute octopus: