About Me

Why Self-driving cars

For years, I’ve been excited about the upcoming autonomous revolution, especially in self-driving cars. But I had always just assumed that the only people qualified to move that revolution along were the Elon Musks, the Sebastian Thruns; the modern day Galileo’s. When I saw that Udacity was offering a NanoDegree in self-driving cars, I was blown away. How could a normal guy like me, who likes to tinker and who taught himself programming, actually contribute to this? I am so excited for the transformation that self-driving cars will bring to society. I can’t believe I might actually be a part of making that happen.

Overview

I enjoy learning and problem solving -- code is the problem solving tool I happen to be using right now.

My name is John Mansell. My wife and I both work remotely, which allows us to travel the world while we work from anywhere. I enjoy learning and problem solving; code is the problem solving tool I happen to be using right now. I love the variety of problems that code has the ability to solve, and I love finding clean, elegant solutions to problems through code. I also enjoy getting plugged into my community, especially through the local church. My hobbies include woodworking, hiking, and swing dancing.

History

Ever since I was little, I’ve enjoyed fixing and problem solving. I was right there with my dad whenever he worked on family cars. I had more fun helping my dad fix something around the house than playing video games. He taught me how to think about problems and analyze solutions. He also instilled in me an attitude of helping neighbors and friends if they had something broken at their house that needed fixing. We had a white-board at our house and would regularly diagram the latest problem and our thoughts on how to fix it.

One of the best things that ever happened to me, was failing organic chemistry in college.

As I grew older, I kept the passion for problem solving. My favorite classes were in math and science. One of the best things that ever happened to me, was failing organic chemistry in college. When I was younger, I enjoyed learning, but I only wanted to do enough work to learn the concept and move on. When I took organic chemistry, a notoriously difficult class, that approach was dramatically insufficient. I failed the first semester, and wasn’t allowed to move onto the second semester. It was the most abrupt consequence to my previous approach to learning. I had to retake the class and I put a lot more effort into it. Originally, I put in the extra effort just to get a passing grade. But I quickly learned the lesson that investing the extra effort yielded a return of a much deeper knowledge and appreciation for the material. That experience was a driving force in my going on to graduate with a degree in chemistry. After that, I continued to grow in self discipline. I now appreciate how much more beautiful learning about a subject can be when I put in the effort to understand the nuance.

I graduated with a degree in chemistry with a minor in math. I was particularly attracted to analytical chemistry. In analytical chemistry, accurate analysis is a direct result of precise measurement, thoughtful methods, and obsessively clean glassware. This fit well with my new-found fascination for thorough, detailed work and the joy of seeing excellence in the resulting measurement. I was amazed that I could accurately measure contaminants in air and water so small they can’t be seen, with an accuracy in parts per billion.

Programming

While working on one particular project in analytical chemistry, a friend of mine at the lab wrote a program to help us analyze the data. It was a simple program written in Java, but it saved us hundreds of man hours looking for pattern in the data. I was immediately fascinated by this new tool for problem-solving. Pretty soon I took my first “Intro to Programming” class in C, then took the next class in C++. I soon began to see a whole new world of problems which coding was well suited to fix. I love leveraging the power of computers to solve problems, automate tasks, or just make life more fun.