The author of the post is actually a "she," not a "he." I hate to be pedantic, but I think it's important to not assume authors of technical posts are men.
Second, no I should not assume. Women and tech have a complex enough relationship as is, and I fully support making our industry more inclusive
Third, you should not assume either. A name is not enough to determine someone's sex or gender. It is then safest to use "they" or even ze or zhe [1], though obviously very few people do. I also hate to be pedantic :).
[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-ne...
It really is an important point, not pedantry, to not assume based on names because many cultures have names that sound like the other gender to American ears (and vice versa, no doubt).
But it's perfectly correct: English writers have been using both the singular 'they' continuously for hundreds of years (14th century?). It also has equivalents in other west European languages (e.g. the German neuter gender and the French ils for a group of people of indeterminate gender), so it's not an English invention either.
All of those things are no longer true, based on my casual reading of the New York Times.
(Note - I was also told to use "He" as the generic case for singular person. Outside of english 11/12, I've never used anything other than "they" - and have never had anyone comment on it. "They" as the singular person form is fine, and avoids the gender confusion.)
If you know someone rather well, you say
"Wie geht es dir" - "How are you?"
but if you don't know him, you say
"Wie geht es ihnen?", which literally means "How are they?"
Also, back in the old days, you would talk to the nobility in plural.
"Wie geht es euch?", there is no equivalent in English I guess, since you is plural and singular, "How are you?"
And it's totally fine "They are" has been used in the way for hundreds of years.
"Though semantically singular or ambiguous, singular they remains morphologically and syntactically plural (e.g. it still takes plural forms of verbs)."
Thanks.