The ideas in both Snow Crash and Diamond Age are wonderful, worthy of considerable investment, but Stephenson's writing is harmed by his inclusion of pandering to a lowest common denominator of reader: already mentioned is the character's name being "Hero Protagonist", in addition he goes into a bit too much lurid detail during a main character rape with pretty demeaning sexual name, and the climax of Snow Crash is literally a description of the abstract visual effects one would see if Snow Crash were a VFX heavy feature film. Diamond Age is more mature, but the Primer has 'super book' capabilities closer to the Matrix Download of Knowledge to enable more excitement in his narrative. Great ideas, but a bit too comic book in execution.
Beyond what you have pointed out, this list of tropes helps remind us of how weak some of the characters were as well as details that seemed unnecessary or out-of-placec.
