Sentiment overflow in the testing stack: Analyzing software testing posts on Stack Overflow

Mark Swillus

doi:10.1016/j.jss.2023.111804

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Sentiment overflow in the testing stack: Analyzing software testing posts on Stack Overflow

2023-11-01

Mark Swillus *

Andy Zaidman

DOI：10.1016/j.jss.2023.111804

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Abstract

En 中文

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. Editor's note: Open Science material was validated by the Journal of Systems and Software Open Science Board.& COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Keywords:

Stack Overflow

Software testing

Sentiment analysis

Grounded theory

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