wannabee
/won'▫-bee/ (Or, more plausibly, spelled "wannabe") [Madonna
fans who dress, talk, and act like their idol; probably
originally from biker slang] A would-be {hacker}. The
connotations of this term differ sharply depending on the age
and exposure of the subject. Used of a person who is in or
might be entering {larval stage}, it is semi-approving; such
wannabees can be annoying but most hackers remember that they,
too, were once such creatures. When used of any professional
programmer, CS academic, writer, or {suit}, it is derogatory,
implying that said person is trying to cuddle up to the hacker
mystique but doesn't, fundamentally, have a prayer of
understanding what it is all about. Overuse of hacker terms
is often an indication of the {wannabee} nature. Compare
{newbie}.
Historical note: The wannabee phenomenon has a slightly
different flavour now (1993) than it did ten or fifteen years
ago. When the people who are now hackerdom's tribal elders
were in {larval stage}, the process of becoming a hacker was
largely unconscious and unaffected by models known in popular
culture - communities formed spontaneously around people who,
▫as individuals▫, felt irresistibly drawn to do hackerly
things, and what wannabees experienced was a fairly pure,
skill-focussed desire to become similarly wizardly. Those
days of innocence are gone forever; society's adaptation to
the advent of the microcomputer after 1980 included the
elevation of the hacker as a new kind of folk hero, and the
result is that some people semi-consciously set out to ▫be
hackers▫ and borrow hackish prestige by fitting the popular
image of hackers. Fortunately, to do this really well, one
has to actually become a wizard. Nevertheless, old-time
hackers tend to share a poorly articulated disquiet about the
change; among other things, it gives them mixed feelings about
the effects of public compendia of lore like this one.
[{Jargon File}]