A Coursera course introducing MiniZinc, a constraint modeling language, and constraint-based modeling of combinatorial problems. Commenters describe it as an introduction to modeling and solving with constraint programming.

Commenters call the Coursera courses an excellent, very effective introduction to MiniZinc and combinatorial constraint modeling.

What commenters said (3)

1. Strongly recommendselviejo2020in “Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?”

   Programming is 1,000 room hotel of which we live in only one.

   I recommend you study different programming paradigms because in them we can find really interesting approaches to solve problems.

   For me those have been:

   - functional programming (with Haskell) - logic programming (prolog) - Constraint Programming with the excellent Coursera class on minizinc.

   Those paradigms made programming fun again for me.

   PS: I also stay away from JavaScript... When I was working with JS.. I was seriously considering leaving programming... Thankfully I changed jobs and I haven't had to touch it anymore.

2. Recommendsmzl2022in “Wordle-solving state of the art: all optimality results so far”

   I agree with the recommendation to start with a modelling language in a sibling comment. On the MiniZinc homepage, there are Coursera courses linked that are quite nice as an introduction into combinatorial modelling.

   Apart from that, it is worth noting that the solver used in the article, OR-Tools, is not strictly a SAT solver. I would rather describe it as a hybrid portfolio solver, since it combines constraint programming, SAT, MIP, and local search in a single solver. It is also possible to use that solver as a back-end when solving a model written in MiniZinc.

3. RecommendsJtsummers2018in “Constraint Solving with MiniZinc”

   If this is of interest to you, I can recommend the Coursera courses. They are very effective for introducing both MiniZinc and constraint-based modeling of problems.

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