Software testing is an integral part of modern software engineering practice. Past research has not only underlined its significance, but also revealed its multi-faceted nature. The practice of software testing and its adoption is influenced by many factors that go beyond tools or technology. This paper sets out to investigate the context of software testing from the practitioners' point of view by mining and analyzing sentimental posts on the widely used question and answer website Stack Overflow. By qualitatively analyzing sentimental expressions of practitioners, which we extract from the Stack Overflow dataset using sentiment analysis tools, we discern factors that help us to better understand the lived experience of software engineers with regards to software testing. Grounded in the data that we have analyzed, we argue that sentiments like insecurity, despair and aspiration, have an impact on practitioners' attitude towards testing. We suggest that they are connected to concrete factors like the level of complexity of projects in which software testing is practiced.
翻译:软件测试是现代软件工程实践的一个组成部分。过去的研究不仅强调了软件测试的重要性,而且还揭示了其多面性。软件测试实践及其采用受到许多超越工具或技术的因素的影响。本文提出从实践者的角度调查软件测试的背景,通过开采和分析广泛使用的问答网站Stack overflow的情感文章,从质量上分析从业人员的情感表现,我们用情绪分析工具从Stack overflow数据集中提取的这些表现,我们发现有助于我们更好地了解软件工程师在软件测试方面的活经验的因素。我们根据我们分析的数据认为,不安全、绝望和渴望等情绪对实践者对测试的态度有影响。我们建议,它们与实践软件测试的项目的复杂性程度等具体因素有关。