Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car

Phenomenal Look At Emerging Tech. I'll be upfront here: I am an experienced programmer that has been coding professionally since around the time covered more towards the middle of this book, when the push for the Autonomous Car was leaving DARPA and beginning to be pushed more by private industry. While I've never worked in anything remotely similar to this particular type of programming (my own work usually involves some form of web application, even when automating business processing), I thus have a degree of insight into the challenges from at least that side of the house.

And y'all, this book covers the history of this particular tech and its challenges in stunning clarity, as one might expect from a WIRED reporter. This is a fascinating subject filled with... shall we say, “colorful”... characters and outrageous stunts, and Davies paints them all in 8k, warts and all. For this to be a debut book is even more remarkable, as Davies puts together a long form narrative structure that rivals the clarity of even far more seasoned science book writers. Very much recommended.