Constraint programming is a thriving area of research that is used a lot in practice for solving various kinds of combinatorial optimization problems. It’s simi

Constraint programming is a thriving area of research that is used a lot in practice for solving various kinds of combinatorial optimization problems. It’s similar in use cases to mathematical programming (such as linear programming and mixed integer programming) and SAT/SMT solving, and each technique has their own pros and cons. The easiest way to test CP out is probably using the modelling language MiniZinc. It is from the CP tradition in how models are expressed, but can compile down to many different types of solvers. While there are programming languages that integrate CP, the main way it is implemented and used is through libraries such as Gecode, Google Or-tools, and IBM CP Optimizer.