Coronavirus tips for software developers

With COVID 19 wreaking havoc globally I thought I should write about precautions that a particularly important for us the screen hugging software developers. I know this is horribly politically incorrect thing to say: but one good thing about software developers are that most of them are not that much of social being.

Hence they are likely to go out less and expose themselves less :) Maybe all that will left of the mankind are a bunch of software developers after the virus finally leaves us - hmmm!

Anyway, back to reality, here are some things that software developers need to be careful about when it comes to coronavirus.

Be careful about surfaces of phones and monitors

In a recent study in the Journal of Hospital Infection found based on 250 mobile phones of hospital staff, that pathogens like coronaviruses can survive on smartphone glass surfaces for up to nine days. 

With the smartphone right next to our face a lot of the times and with us tapping on its surface all the time its an easy way to spread the virus. So make sure you clean those smart phones as much as you can and the same goes for those computer monitors.

btw, interesting trivia if you are into that sort of thing: A 2019 survey found that people touch their phones 2,617 times per day on average!

Avoid touching your face.

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but a lot of developers tend to put their fingers on their face or fiddle with their hair when they are thinking (which is something they have to do a lot). Your mouth, nose, eyes and ears are all routes into your body for viruses.

And your fingers are the most obvious part of the body that is likely to pickup the virus, so in effect the touching of the face is a fast way to transfer the virus to your respiratory system. This simple measure of avoiding to touch your face is very hard to maintain consistently, but is essential for infection control.

Skip those meetups

One big social event that developers really like joining are the tech meetups - both formal and informal. That’s an obvious thing to avoid right now. As with any large congregations you are just increasing your chance of exposure.

Here’s where online meetups and skype call are great - you get all the benefits of the meetups yet don’t face the risk.

Avoid travelling

Many of us have to travel for work. To meetup with other teams, business teams or customer site visits. That would increase your chances of exposure exponentially. A sad example is the first coronavirus case in Bengaluru - a software developer who had to visit client site in Dubai.

OK, I’ll finish off with an ineresting twist on coronavirus for developers. With the huge interest and concern about the virus there has been a surge of software applications related to the virus.

Take Corona 100m as an example will alert a user if they come within 100 m (328 ft) of a location visited by someone who’s had Covid-19. “The installs are increasing about 20,000 every hour," said Bae Won-Seok, one of the developers of Corona 100m.

New apps are coming in almost every day on the mobile apps stores for an obvious reason - there is a huge surge in interest. Apart from mobile apps there are some really cool web apps that tracks the virus.

The best of the lot is by Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering that tracks the spread almost real time. The red dots are getting scary close to Bangladesh, btw :(

OK, I just realized I can never leave this post on a happy note, so I might as well give up. Stay safe my friends we have a lot more software to build!