Comet is a commercial programming language designed by at-the-time Brown University professor Dr. Pascal Van Hentenryck and used to solve complex combinatorial optimization problems in areas such as resource allocation and scheduling. It offers a range of optimization algorithms: from mathematical programming to constraint programming, local search algorithms and "dynamic stochastic combinatorial optimization."^[1]

Comet programs specify local search algorithms as two components:

• a high-level model describing the applications in terms of constraints, constraint combinators, and objective functions;
• a search procedure expressed in terms of the model at a high abstraction level.

This approach promotes reusability across applications.

Its API allows it to be used as a software library. Comet also features high-level abstractions for parallel and distributed computing, based on loop scheduling, interrupts, and work stealing.