Viewing profile — cchianel

Look at it this way: I am arguing against "No Free Lunch theorem says an optimization algorithm cannot solve all problems because for some problems it performs worse than other alg…

I personally disagree with "no free lunch"; (for the uninitiated, "no free lunch" refer to the fact for any deterministic algorithm, there exist a problem that will force the algor…

It seems to just be a wrapper over or-tools and other solvers from their landing page, with the difference being it run on their servers versus your hardware. Their website does no…

Think of WASM as a kinda universal library target. You can compile C, Rust, C#, Java to WASM, and then you can use it in a different language from the source. This way, Java can ru…

You can find a list of quickstarts at https://github.com/TimefoldAI/timefold-quickstarts . Examples include: - School Timetabling - Employee Scheduling - Conference Scheduling - Fl…

Currently, no language ports of Timefold Solver are planned. Unfortunately, FFI (foreign function interface) have a terrible performance penalty, and since we would be doing multip…

Although this post discusses Constraint Programming - Satisfiability (CP-SAT) Solvers and Mixed Integer Problem (MIP) Solvers, it does not discuss Metaheuristic Solvers. Metaheuris…

I haven't; from a quick reading, InfoBax is for when you have an expensive function and want to do limited evaluations. Timefold works with cheap functions and does many evaluation…

I thought "No Free Lunch Theorem" was a joke from its name (although I should know better since "Hairy Ball Theorem" exists). So if I understand correct, it states that all optimiz…

By 1% of optimal, I was giving an example percentage to clarify there are solutions that exists, that are almost as good as optimal, that can be found in reasonable amount of time.…

That depends; do you want the optimal solution? If so, I agree it is impossible for a fully general problem solver to find the optimal solution to a problem in a reasonable amount …

Some additional optimization resources (for metaheuristics, where you only have the objective/score function and no derivative): - "Essentials of Metaheuristics" by Sean Luke https…

Games on old consoles such as Nintendo 64 and the Playstation One use a variety of tricks to be playable on limited hardware. For the specific example of Final Fantasy VII, there i…

Related: Archipelago ( https://archipelago.gg/ ), a framework that randomizes multiple games, across multiple clients. For example, Player A is playing Mario 64, and Player B is pl…

N-Queens can be solved (find a single valid solution) in polynomial time [1]. That being said, Local Search is a powerful technique that can solve a lot of problems such as employe…

CPython bytecode changes behaviour for no reason and very suddenly, so you will be vulnerable to changes in Python language versions. A few from the top of my head: - In Python 3.1…

The primary reason, in my opinion, is the vast majority of Python libraries lack type annotations (this includes the standard library). Without type annotations, there is very litt…

As someone who did a CPython Bytecode → Java bytecode translator ( https://timefold.ai/blog/java-vs-python-speed ), I strongly recommend against the CPython Bytecode → PySM Assembl…

(Disclosure: I work for Timefold) OR Tools is a MIPS/SAT solver, while Timefold is a meta-heuristic solver. As a result, the developer experience is quite different: - In OR Tools,…

IPC methods were actually used when constructing the foreign API prototype, since if you do not use JPype, the JVM must be launched in its own process. The IPC methods were used on…

JNI/the new Foreign FFI communicate with CPython via CPython's C API. The primary issue is getting the garbage collectors to work with each other. The Java solver works by repeated…

I had to deal with a lot of FFI to enable a Java Constraint Solver (Timefold) to call functions defined in CPython. In my experience, most of the performance problems from FFI come…

I had the misfortune of translating CPython bytecode to Java bytecode, and I do not wish that experience on anyone: - CPython's bytecode is extremely unstable. Not only do new opco…

John Walker built a virtual machine for the Babbage's instruction set, and it has a web emulator: https://fourmilab.ch/babbage/emulator.html . I don't think Ada program is availabl…

For constraint programming solvers, you need to define a model (i.e. what are the variables that the solver can change). Typically, a good model naturally enforces hard constraints…