Hello Reader! with wind and rain becoming ever-present, summer has officially given way to autumn. In this episode of Bluebird Briefings I'll give you a little summary of what happened in the world of optimization over the summer of 2025: Major Industry News Gurobi released the State of Mathematical Optimization 2025 report. It contains results from what's probably the biggest survey among optimization practitioners. The findings are impressive. They attest to the growth of optimization as...
22 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader! Every Superhero Has an Origin Story For GAMSPy’s machine learning superpowers, that story begins with a package called OMLT. OMLT is short for Optimization and Machine Learning Toolkit. It’s a package that extends Pyomo to integrate machine learning models directly into optimization problems. Because OMLT supports ONNX interoperability, you can take a model trained in TensorFlow, Keras, or PyTorch and embed it into a Pyomo optimization model. It also happens to be the package...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader! Here is an intuitive description of the inner workings of 4 different approaches to solving optimization problems: 🔹 Heuristics: Fast & Practical A heuristic is a rule of thumb for decision-making. It doesn’t guarantee the best solution, but it’s often good enough. A strong heuristic has at least one of these qualities: ✅ It finds high-quality solutions quickly. ✅ It delivers decent results with minimal effort. Even if a heuristic fails often, it can still be valuable if it's...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader! At the dentist, I had to fill a form. I wrote "Software Developer" as my profession. The doctor was satisfied — he knew I worked at a computer and not with heavy machinery. Exactly the information he needed. But my work is much more complex. If someone asks me at a party, I don’t say “Software Developer.” My job is about finding concepts, communicating with teams, and solving problems. Writing code is just the final step — implementing a good solution. So why don’t I tell the...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader! Most developers turn to StackOverflow when they need a quick fix—just type your question into Google and voilà. But did you know there are smaller, topic-specific platforms from the same family? While they may not have as many existing threads, they’re incredibly helpful for focused questions. If your search comes up empty, don’t hesitate to post your own—chances are you’ll get thoughtful replies within hours or days. A few tips to increase your chances of helpful answers: Post...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader! Did you ever stumble through an unfamiliar hotel room at night, desperately searching for that ridiculously placed light switch? Maybe you even stubbed your toe like I once did in a Brussels hotel. That fumbling in the dark perfectly captures what happens when we navigate without a good model of our environment. As this is the first briefing in August, I'm also giving a personal update at the end. You're Facing the Same Challenge as Ancient Vertebrates Not having a spatial model...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader! Ever get stuck on an optimization problem and wish you could get quick help without waiting for forum responses or digging through documentation for hours? Insights from the Pre-Summer-Break Conference Week The last week of June was busy in the optimization world. While many practitioners were traveling between conferences — Gurobi's events in Berlin and Amsterdam, plus the academic EURO conference in Leeds — there were some interesting developments worth sharing. Gurobi...
4 months ago • 1 min read