JargonFile/entries/wannabee.txt

wannabee

/won'@bee/ , n. (also, more plausibly, spelled wannabe ) [from a term
recently used to describe Madonna fans who dress, talk, and act like their
idol; prob.: 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 terms from this lexicon is often an indication of the wannabee
nature. Compare newbie. Historical note: The wannabee phenomenon has a
slightly different flavor 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-focused 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.