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Leaving Sci-Fi for a Different Network


One-time prodigy is chief architect for tools company

By Geoff Koch
April 1, 2007 — 
Sometime in the not-too-distant future, ScriptLogic will release several next-generation versions of its various network administration tools. It’s hardly out of the ordinary that the code will have been shepherded through development and testing by the Boca Raton, Fla.-based company’s chief software architect, Brian Bucklew. But what may be surprising are the 27-year-old Bucklew’s credentials: a long history of obsessive tinkering with code, an abiding love of science fiction and computing games, and when it comes to education, a high school diploma.

The history of computing is rife with tales of college dropouts who make good, from Bill Gates to Larry Ellison to Steve Jobs. But it’s an archetype that’s beginning to feel somewhat antiquated as professionalization creeps into every nook and cranny of technology, including the formerly anarchic world of gaming. Universities used to scowl at the use of their precious computing resources by the gaming crowd, while today those same campuses scramble to put in place serious undergraduate and graduate degree programs in game development and design.

Certainly the problems that ScriptLogic solves, including how to eliminate network administration errors and better manage system updates, have long been the province of pros with staid training in such areas as systems engineering and computer science. That Bucklew thrives in a world of degree-holding suits—he has long hair and says he wears shorts to work most days—seems due in equal measure to his quirky personal history and undeniable programming chops.

Growing up in the 1980s in space-crazy Plantation, Fla., Bucklew at first was convinced he wanted to be an aerospace engineer. Though Plantation is close enough to Cape Canaveral to be able to see Space Shuttle launches when conditions are right, Bucklew was influenced less by NASA than by science fiction novels such as “Hyperion” by Dan Simmons and “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card.

While still in his teens, he decided he wanted to build sci-fi-inspired games, not those of the simple tic-tac-toe variety. It was what he saw on screens at the local arcade that intrigued him. So while his contemporaries were home watching television shows like “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Doogie Howser, M.D.,” Bucklew would spend hours programming on his 286-based PC in QuickBASIC or ANSI C, trying to build spaceships that would fly across the computer screen. Invariably he found himself in way over his head and would end up abandoning the project, though not until he had learned all there was to know about a particular programming problem.

“I must have had hundreds of incomplete projects in my youth,” he said. “Even today I think it’s important to overreach when learning anything new. Not by so far that you get discouraged, but enough that you get a pretty thorough and deep grounding in the topic you are working on.”

IBM TAKES NOTICE
Bucklew’s obsessions at the keyboard attracted the attention of a neighbor, who happened to be a senior manager at IBM. At the time Big Blue was still working on its OS/2 Warp operating system in Florida, and the neighbor offered the 14-year-old Bucklew a summer internship working on the project. The only problem was that Bucklew didn’t fit into typical intern categories, so he was brought in under an IBM program for underserved minorities—teenagers apparently being an underserved crowd.

His performance was so good that when IBM moved its OS/2 team to Texas soon after his internship ended, Bucklew was offered a full-time job. As a high school student still a few years from graduation, he had to turn it down, but by then the programming bug had bitten him.

When later he was given an opportunity to leave Florida Atlantic University to work for a company on speech-recognition technology, he promptly quit classes. And when that first job fell through after only a short time, he didn’t beg for readmission to FAU. Rather, still only 17, he took a second job at a company working on flight-tracking software. Soon thereafter he jumped again, this time to the predecessor of ScriptLogic.

Ten years later, Bucklew finds himself nominally in charge of a global network of developers working from two Florida locations, New Zealand and Russia.

Bucklew is mum on specifics as to what’s coming for ScriptLogic, but said he remains heavily involved in all aspects of application development, especially when it comes to the interaction of all the existing and new components. He speaks freely, though, when it comes to advice to others seeking to plot their course on a coding landscape that continually seems to get more complex.

“Keep exploring and learning, even and especially outside of programming; you’d be surprised at the connections your mind makes when you really delve into a topic like music or even history,” he said. “I really believe that any learning makes all learning easier.”


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