> Would you have rather the commenter have said 'their'?
As the poster demonstrated (by using "the author" in almost all places), it is often possible to go without pronouns entirely, at the expense of some repetitiveness or awkwardness. In this case, all that would have been required would have been to change
> The author spends a lot of effort trying to make his functions point-free.
to
> The author spends a lot of effort trying to make functions point free.
or, if the possessive is really important, the awkward
> The author spends a lot of effort trying to make the author's [or just "his or her"] functions point free.
However, as I have said elsethread, I think that this was almost certainly inattentiveness rather than any attempt to perpetuate gender biases.
