
Ask HN: Anyone using constraint programming in production? - dangom
There&#x27;s been many posts about PROLOG here in HN these past months. I was wondering if anyone is using it or other languages that support constraint programming in production. If yes, what is your experience?
======
mzl
Sometimes I get to use constraint programming (CP) at $DAYJOB.

For prototying solutions, the MiniZinc language is nice to use, since it is a
language for modelling combinatorial optimization problems.

To use a CP solution in an actual product, I prefer to use a solver library in
C++ or Java. Typical examples would be Gecode (C++), Choco (Java), or or_tools
(C++ with Java bindings). If I had the money to buy an expensive product, IBM
CP Optimizer seems to be a really good system with awesome automated search
heuristics.

In addition, the ideas and techniques in CP systems are useful for all kinds
of optimization tasks, so even if there is not actual CP-system used, I think
it is worthwhile to use as a way to think about problems.

------
nuclx
Interesting question. By the way, would PROLOG, being mainly a logic
programming language, really be the go-to language for constraint programming
in the industry?

~~~
mzl
Personallly, I don't think so. As far as I've seen, most of the time, a CP-
system implemented as a library would be used.

