Find the Longest Path
switchbg1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2021–2026
music · general · evergreen · 2021–2026 on HN
Find the Longest Path is a comedic song by Daniel J. Barrett, a Billy Joel parody that describes the NP-hard longest path problem in informal terms.
HN shares it as a fun, memorable way to explain the longest path problem and as an entry in lists of programming and math songs.
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3 comments from Hacker News
Haha please do, a video would be great. Your song reminded me of the song: "Find the Longest Path" which you may get a kick out of: ▶ this video
Finding the longest path in a graph is itself a pretty well-described NP-complete problem: link Alternately, you can listen to a Billy Joel parody that describes the problem in decidedly less academic terms: ▶ this video
Stan Rogers has a knack for writing songs that sound older than himself, this song shows he doesn't need nautical themes to do it. Some other programming and math songs Kill -9 link Find the longest path ▶ this video