I'm glad to see the domain of constraint programming and operational research in general generate interest so I thought I would take the opportunity to share so

I'm glad to see the domain of constraint programming and operational research in general generate interest so I thought I would take the opportunity to share some links and resources I have found useful. Personally, I've spent most of my time on the routing (TSP, VRP, VRPTW) side of things using CP (OscaR-CP). Discrete optimization and constraint programming can be a bit difficult to get into. There are two great free online courses on Coursera that do a good job at introducing the topic. Discrete Optimization https://www.coursera.org/learn/discrete-optimization https://www.coursera.org/learn/discrete-optimization I don't remember the exact content of this course but I believe it covers the basics in a few different methodologies. Basic Modeling for Discrete Optimization https://www.coursera.org/learn/basic-modeling https://www.coursera.org/learn/basic-modeling This is a great course by Peter Stuckey that uses MiniZinc. The MiniZinc programming language is a great starting point that teaches you to think of solving discrete optimization problems only in terms of modelling the problem. Håkan Kjellerstrands blog is another great resource http://www.hakank.org/ http://www.hakank.org/ It contains hundreds of different models for a large variety of different solvers. Chances are that he has created a model for your solver for a similar problem. Two books worth mentioning are: Handbook of Constraint Programming Principles of Constraint Programming Other solvers/frameworks: The OscaR library https://bitbucket.org/oscarlib/oscar/wiki/Home https://bitbucket.org/oscarlib/oscar/wiki/Home My personal favorite. An OR framework written entirely in Scala. As such it's an absolute joy to work with and the internals are (relatively speaking) easier to understand. GeCode https://www.gecode.org/ https://www.gecode.org/ Another extremely potent solver. Exclusively CP based. Mini-CP https://minicp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://minicp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ An extremly lightweight CP solver, designed for educational purposed to expose how a CP solver works without obfuscating performance optimizations found in research/production solvers. MiniZinc https://www.minizinc.org/ https://www.minizinc.org/ A solver agnostic constraint modelling languages, designed to interface a given optimization model with different solvers. A few notable researches: Phil Kilby Pascal Van Hentenryck Paul Shaw Laurent Perron - OR-tools Peter Stuckey - MiniZinc Pierre Schaus - OscaR, Mini-CP Renaud Hartert - OscaR I also want to make a plug for the work of the Uppsala University optimization group http://www.it.uu.se/research/group/optimisation/ http://www.it.uu.se/research/group/optimisation/ Especially the work of Pierre Flener, Gustav Björdal and Justin Pearson who I've had the pleasure to work with during my masters thesis on vehicle routing using CP.