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