wannabee
     n : an ambitious and aspiring young person; "a lofty aspirant";
         "two executive hopefuls joined the firm"; "the audience
         was full of Madonna wannabes" [syn: {aspirant}, {aspirer},
          {hopeful}, {wannabe}]
Source: WordNet® 2.0

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.


Source: The Jargon File