A great walkthrough...I've read this before and still remember how the article was laid out...it's unfortunately rare for "theory" websites to have decent typography and whitespace that doesn't hinder reading.

In my comsci classes, I'm pretty sure we talked about Dijkstra's algorithm...and I'm pretty sure we talked about priority queues. But not until I recently tried implementing the algorithm on my own (just for a fun six-degrees-of-separation network graph) did I realize how important having a priority queue was...I wish the two concepts had been taught in tandem and shown how they relate to algorithm performance (though yes, I do realize, according to Wikipedia, that Dijkstra's original algorithm did not have a min-priority queue).

It'd be fun to go to a college com sci class now and see if these concepts are much better explained now that we have the ability to show them easily via interactive means (I'm sure many here have seen this wonderful site: http://qiao.github.io/PathFinding.js/visual/)...It's not only that they can be seen and interacted with, but it's conceivably much easier for the average com sci student to attempt to build an interactive visualization to demonstrate these concepts....A bit harder when you're working with only C/C++