(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]
n. 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 (1991) 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.
