I am not sure what your colleague means with "too damn hard" - I used it once in production code to optimize distribution of lots on an assembly line, for examp

I am not sure what your colleague means with "too damn hard" - I used it once in production code to optimize distribution of lots on an assembly line, for example. That was a COBOL program dynamically preparing the equations and then calling a C routine (copied straight out of the "Numerical Recipes in C") and that was all. Of course you have to get a bit of practice about how to represent your problem in terms of equation and objective function, and yes, there are cases where it can become quite complicated and/or become intractable due to variable explosion... but it is not necessarily so. (I cannot suggest a book, sorry, but if you want to contact me in email we can go over your problem in general terms and see if I can provide some general advice, maybe?)