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]