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I might sound a bit hypersensitive here, but couldn't the author easily avoid using "he" and "him" when referring to potential candidates for software programming positions?

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I now see the opposite effect: everyone is scared to look sexist so everyone ends up putting "she". Maybe we should call programmers "it"?

'they' is a natural sounding gender neutral term.

Except the interviewee is not plural. We lack a singular gender-neutral pronoun in English that it is acceptable to apply to people, and appropriating "they" doesn't seem like the right fix.

Personally, I vote we either appropriate "he" to be gender neutral or realize that stereotypes influence language more than language influences stereotypes.

Singular "they" isn't an appropriation - it's a reversion to pre-1850 usage. See http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/sgtheirl.html for details.

Although English doesn't emphasize gender in nouns, in romantic languages (which are the basis for English), that class of nouns is masculine.

Where the gender is not known, the correct pronoun is "he." A spokesman is a he; a spokeswoman is a she; a spokesperson is a he.

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