In the last few months or so, it appears the PHP Community has finally found the Joel Test. Lorna Jane spoke about it last month at PHPNW 09 and this week Brandon Savage adapted it for web development. While I'd love to point out the fact that I've been writing about the Joel Test for years and even have the "Joel On Software" book on the required reading list for Blue Parabola staff... but I digress...

Keith looks at the different parts of the test - from making shippable software to good unit tests to creating a good build process - and compares them to the current state of web2project. He mainly focuses on the question of "Can you make a shippable version of your software in one step?"

When Joel wrote the test, there wasn't much development for the web; the little that was being done wasn't being done in any of the modern languages that we write in today. In fact, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Gmail, and LinkedIn hadn't even been invented yet. Today's world makes heavy use of web-based software (the term "software as as a service" keeps floating around). And so, it is necessary to update Joel's test in order to properly apply it to web development. This has been done by some folks, but I will do it again, mostly because I disagree with them.

The test asks questions about source control use, well-defined specifications, quiet working conditions, unit testing and bug fixing techniques. He works through each of these, sometimes just giving an update to the original discussion and others talking about how he disagrees with the concept all together (like having detailed specs).