Tropical geometry can be viewed as an efficient tool to organize degenerations. The techniques to count curves in surfaces via tropical geometry are related to the Fock space approach initiated by Cooper–Pandharipande, via floor diagrams, which can be viewed as the combinatorial essence of a tropical curve count (following Block–Goettsche). Our own contribution relates the tropical and the Fock space approach for descendant Gromov-Witten invariants. Joint work with Renzo Cavalieri, Paul Johnson and Dhruv Ranganathan.