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重要组成部分。过去的研究不仅强调了其重要性，还揭示了其多面性。软件测试实践及其采用受许多超越工具或技术因素的影响。本文旨在通过挖掘和分析广泛使用的问答网站Stack Overflow上带有情感色彩的帖子，从实践者的视角探究软件测试的语境。通过使用情感分析工具从Stack Overflow数据集中提取实践者的情感表达并进行定性分析，我们识别出有助于更好地理解软件工程师在软件测试方面的实际体验的因素。基于所分析的数据，我们论证诸如不安、绝望和渴望等情感对实践者对待测试的态度产生影响。我们认为这些情感与软件测试实践所处的项目复杂度等具体因素相关联。