WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

wannabee
    n 1: 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, wannabee]

The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):

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.


The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

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]