SE Radio 693: Mark Williamson on AI-Assisted Debugging

SE Radio 693: Mark Williamson on AI-Assisted Debugging

Author: team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team) November 6, 2025 Duration: 54:12

Mark Williamson, CTO of Undo, joins host Priyanka Raghavan to discuss AI-assisted debugging. The conversation is structured around three main objectives:

  • understanding how AI can serve as a debugging assistant; 
  • examining AI-powered debugging tools;
  • exploring whether AI debuggers can independently find and fix bugs.

Mark highlights how AI can support debugging with its ability to analyze vast amounts of data, narrow down issues, and even generate tests. From there, the discussion turns to AI debugging tools, with a particular look at ChatDBG's strengths and limitations, with a peek at time travel debugging. In the final segment, they consider several real-world scenarios and evaluate the feasibility and practicality of AI acting autonomously in debugging.

Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.


For developers who build the world's most critical systems, Software Engineering Radio offers deep, substantive conversations that move beyond the hype cycle. This isn't about quick tips or news flashes; it's a dedicated audio library for career engineers seeking to solidify their foundational knowledge and explore advanced concepts. Each episode is crafted as an enduring resource, featuring either a comprehensive tutorial breaking down a specific technology or methodology, or a detailed interview with a leading practitioner shaping the field. You'll hear focused discussions on everything from low-level systems architecture and programming language design to team dynamics and project management, all through the lens of professional software creation. The content is exclusively produced for this podcast, ensuring thoughtful, in-depth analysis you won't find simply repackaged from conference talks. If your work demands a rigorous understanding of the craft, this is the podcast for you.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers
Podcast Episodes
SE Radio 662: Vlad Khononov on Balancing Coupling in Software Design [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:19
Software architect and author Vlad Khononov joins host Jeff Doolittle for a discussion on balancing coupling in software design. They start by examining coupling and its relationship to complexity and modularity. Vlad ex…
SE Radio 661: Sunil Mallya on Small Language Models [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:28
Sunil Mallya, co-founder and CTO of Flip AI, discusses small language models with host Brijesh Ammanath. They begin by considering the technical distinctions between SLMs and large language models. LLMs excel in generati…
SE Radio 660: Pete Warden on TinyML [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:04
Pete Warden, CEO of Useful Sensors and a founding member of the TensorFlow team at Google, discusses TinyML, the technology enabling machine learning on low-power, small-footprint devices. This innovation opens up applic…
SE Radio 659: Brenden Matthews on Idiomatic Rust [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:54
Brenden Matthews, a seasoned software engineer, entrepreneur, and author of the Idiomatic Rust and Code Like a Pro in Rust books (both from Manning), speaks with SE Radio host Gavin Henry about Idiomatic Rust. They start…
SE Radio 658: Tanya Janca on Secure Coding [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:11:40
Tanya Janca, author of Alice and Bob Learn Secure Coding, discusses secure coding and secure software development life cycle with SE Radio host Brijesh Ammanath. This session explores how integrating security into every…
SE Radio 657: Hong Minhee on ActivityPub and the Fediverse [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:09
Hong Minhee, an open source developer and creator of the Fedify ActivityPub library, discusses the ActivityPub protocol and the fediverse with SE Radio's Jeremy Jung. They explore ActivityPub use cases, including microbl…
SE Radio 656: Ivett Ördög on Rewrite versus Refactor [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:43
Ivett Ördög speaks with host Sam Taggart about rewrite versus refactor -- a choice that many projects face as they grow. It's a topic that inspires a lot of dogmatic feelings. They discuss how companies and projects end…
SE Radio 654: Chris Patterson on MassTransit and Event-Driven Systems [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:06
Chris Patterson, founder and principal architect of MassTransit, joins host Jeff Doolittle to discuss MassTransit, a message bus framework for building distributed systems. The conversation begins with an exploration of…
SE Radio 653: Asanka Abeysinghe on Cell-Based Architecture [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:06
Asanka Abeysinghe, CTO at WSO2, joins host Giovanni Asproni to discuss cell-based architecture -- a style that's intended to combine application, deployment, and team architecture to help organizations respond quickly to…