LJC Meetup at Capital One

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Overview
LJC Meet-ups is a series of events, aimed at giving all Community members an opportunity to present at an LJC event.

The London Java Community is delighted to invite you to our next LJC Meet-up at Capital One.

Join us for an evening of technical talks, fresh ideas, food, drinks and networking with fellow developers and technology professionals from across the community.

This month, we have two very different but equally fascinating talks lined up. From the engineering behind Capital One UK's Server-Driven UI to an exploration of just how far procedural generation can be pushed.

Speaker 1: Sean O'Toole, Staff Software Engineer, Capital One
Title: Finite States, Infinite Possibilities: Capital One's Server-Driven UI

Abstract: Changing anything in a mobile app is slow going: a new binary, an app-store review, and then weeks of waiting for users to actually upgrade before your change reaches everyone. That's in stark contrast to how easily we change data and ship APIs internally, where a change can be live to 100% of consumers the same day.

So why stop at shipping the data? Why not ship the UI itself? That's the idea behind Server-Driven UI: the server doesn't just return the data, it returns the UI definition too, which the client then renders.

In this session we'll go behind the scenes of the real-world SDUI system powering Capital One UK's mobile apps — the Spring Boot service that turns finite states into infinite user journeys, all shipped without a single app release. We'll dig into the engineering that keeps it fast: fanning out a whole journey's data in parallel, coalescing duplicate calls so we don't stampede our own backends, and the honest reason we turned virtual threads down.

About Sean O'Toole
Sean O’Toole is a Staff Software Engineer and has been with Capital One for 11 years. During this time he has completed cloud migrations, rebuilt acquisitions workflows, and built a new server-driven mobile app. His expertise spans RESTful web services in the cloud utilising Java - across servers, lambdas, and containers. Sean is also a passionate open-source contributor who maintains a suite of dinosaur-themed open source libraries for Java and Kotlin.

Speaker 2: Tom Appleyard, Software Developer/Solutions Architect
Title: How far can we go with procedural generation?

Abstract: The talk will start with an overview of techniques and their applications in video games from the 80s to present. I’ll cover a variety of approaches, from generating assets (Oblivion) to scenarios (Left 4 Dead, roguelikes/FTL, Diablo) to the world itself (Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft and No Man’s Sky) if not almost the entire game (.kkrieger). Modern systems like Unreal’s Procedural Content Generation Framework and real-time use of Generative AI will also be covered. This focus for this section is technical capability: what can we do, what does it require and what are the results?

The wider framing asks of the limits. Despite a rocky start, No Man’s Sky has come into its own and proved scale is possible, Dwarf Fortress proved engaging storylines can be procedurally generated and .kkrieger proved you can bootstrap the entire bloody thing from peanuts.

Despite impressive technical accomplishments, marrying these together to create something that doesn’t require some level of human finesse proves elusive. I’ll conclude the talk by examining why this is, what we’re missing and whether it’s a gap that can ever be bridged.

About Tom Appleyard
Tom Appleyard is a Creative Technologist specialising in novel technologies and technical communication. He's spent much of his career translating tech for businesspeople and engineers alike into intuitions they can think with, tangible skills they can build with and how to present & communicate it all themselves.

What to Expect
Come along for an evening of:

• Two engaging technical talks
• Practical insights and thought-provoking ideas
• Questions and discussion with our speakers
• Networking with fellow Java developers and technology professionals
• Food and drinks
• Rooftop drinks and networking after the talks

Whether you're interested in Java, backend engineering, mobile architecture, procedural generation, AI, game development or simply want to connect with the wider technology community, there'll be something to take away from the evening.

Event Schedule
17:30: Event opens - food, drinks & networking
18:30 - Welcome and introduction to Capital One
18:35 - Talk 1: Sean O'Toole - Finite States, Infinite Possibilities: Capital One's Server-Driven UI
18:55 - Break
19:05 - Talk 2: Tom Appleyard - How far can we go with procedural generation?
19:25 - Closing remarks & invitation to rooftop
19:30 - Rooftop drinks & networking
21:00 - Event closes

Important: Please Bring ID
Please make sure you bring valid ID with you to the event. Security at this venue will not allow access without ID, so please ensure you have it with you when you arrive.

We’re looking forward to welcoming you to Capital One for another great evening with the London Java Community!

Huge thanks to our friends at Capital One for sponsoring this event and supporting our Community.

This event is organised by RecWorks on behalf of the London Java Community.
The London Java Community is sponsored by Hazelcast, Neo4j, Redis, and Discover
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