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

Software testing is an integral part of modern software engineering practice. Past research has not only underlined its significance, but also revealed multi-faceted nature. The practice and adoption influenced by many factors that go beyond tools or technology. This paper sets out to investigate the context from practitioners’ point view mining analyzing sentimental posts on widely used question answer website Stack Overflow. By qualitatively expressions practitioners, which we extract Overflow dataset using sentiment analysis tools, discern help us better understand lived experience engineers with regards testing. Grounded in data have analyzed, argue sentiments like insecurity, despair aspiration, impact attitude towards We suggest they are connected concrete level complexity projects practiced. Editor’s note: Open Science material was validated Journal Systems Board.