For starters you might want to read up on gender neutral pronouns. He/She or his/hers can be used in a gender neutral manner, however traditionally the masculine form is used in English when gender neutral is intended.
They/them/their has been seeing broad adoption as a, y'know, actually gender-neutral pronoun, and it should be encouraged. I know some people prefer he/him/his but
a) many people think that reeks of implicit sexism
b) even ignoring a), elevating that to The One Correct English Way is ridiculous overreach
Is "they" or "him/her" a better way forward? Sure. Is it standard practice? No. Can you infer anything about the author's attitudes by his use of standard English grammar? No.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speech#Open_and_closed...
I certainly never said anything about "The One Correct English Way".
As for the condescension; yes that was intended. The response was overly hostile and out of line so the condescension was deserved IMHO. Don't worry yourself though Mike; I spread around the condescension equally to all genders.
Please don't spread any more condescension on Hacker News. Although I'm sure you don't mean to, it's one of the worst things you could do to damage this community.
For more fun facts and rants about gender-neutral they, see: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005423.h...
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Note: there's a strong difference between gender-neutral they when the gender is unknown, and singular they when the gender is known. Some people actually prefer being referred to with 'they/their' in sentences such as "Mary finished their ph.d. at Oxford". I doubt you'll find much historic precedence for that usage, but the use of 'their' when the gender is unknown/unspecified has a long history.
Well, each to their own.
Personal swipes are not allowed in Hacker News comments, regardless of how annoying or provocative some other comment may have been.
(I'm inclined to say that pronoun wars shouldn't be, either, considering the madness that this thread devolved into.)
> "The student will have to read this book carefully if he wishes to do well." - OK
> "A student is expected to attend 90% of the lectures, or he will be in trouble." - WRONG, if your audience has women
> "Julia thought she did well on the exam and he was right." - WRONG
> "Julia thought she did well on the exam and they were right." - WRONG
