I also enjoyed the article's style. I utterly despise "academic paper speak". It is, imho, not the most effective style to communicate complex ideas. I find it so much easier to learn from a more casual "blog post" or in-person presentation over stiff, rigid academic speak.

I find both to be useful in different stages. The casual style is very helpful when starting out. But once I have put in a few weeks or months of study in, then the rigor and preciseness of academic style is good as well.

I agree with you in the sense that something has "died" in writings the follow academic paper speak these days. Just yesterday I saw an ancient article surfaced by Scientific American and Peter Norvig on System Analysis by Strachey. It uses quite a bit of formal language but is super approachable at the same time. That kind of skill is rarely seen these days.