[tangentspace]

Thanks for the link. The author is an editor of the Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics, which also contains very high quality writing and a book I recommend to anyone interested in mathematics and engineering.

I agree that this is a flawed article: the ads are irritating, the grammar is flawed, and calling boolean algebra an algorithm is inaccurate.

But looking past the flaws, I wouldn't describe it as vapid. I see it as more of a very high level survey of some truly important algorithms targeted at general population and students. This kind of writing can be an incredibly important source of inspiration for young people.