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Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with; it will eventually get your main account banned as well.
I've spoken Australian|British English for six decades and never had issue with singular 'they', it's a natural part of day to day discussion.
FWiW I've been on internet forums on a near daily basis since before WWW (original Usenet and !bang!bang addressing) and have nearly always used "they" in discussions when referring to the work or comments of anybody that I've not met personally.
For that matter I mostly use 'they' |'them' | 'their' when referring to people whose gender I know on public forums.
How is it that usage causes you pain?
I accept both usages of the term, but choose the term carefully depending on who I am talking to.
Do they have an opinion on their choice of invariant transforms, etc.
Would they (your parents) have to look up a biography of E.J.Holden to first determine gender before commenting on his or her work?
In the early 1980s I was surrounded by women in mathematics and computer science at the university I attended so I rapidly fell into the habit of not assuming anything about individuals known only by mail or by journal papers.
They do not know or care about invariant transforms, math or sexuality because they are farmers. Offending people they will never meet is on the bottom of their list of priorities.
No drama :)
The question is how would they refer to singuler people whose gender they don't know.
> They do not know or care about invariant transforms, math or sexuality because they are farmers.
You do make some odd assumptions; I was raised on a Kimberley cattle station, am now farming in the Western Australian wheatbelt, and once worked on a sheep shearing robot.
There are a number of farmers that care about math, GIS resource mapping, drone operation, optical laser wool grading, etc. etc. etc.
That your parents do not is not a universal attribute of farmers.
Otherwise... well, that usage is so common--and ancient--that I don't think they know what they are talking about.
True, but I'd say that's a "bad grammar" problem, not a "singular they" problem.
SA is not a naive word-swap of "he/she" with "they (and "him/her" with "them") while keeping everything else the same, but a style which demands a certain internal consistency. You use various words which cover the "one or more" case even when broader context establishes it's just one.
It would be another story if English had an option that covered the case of (people_count==1 && gender==null), but instead we have to make do with either "it" (which denies personhood) or "they" (which is open-ended on count.)
I doubt it was ever "correct English" but it may well have been common in some parts of the UK in times past.