# What happened to Base.colon?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-happened-to-base-colon/16513>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [October 19, 2018, 12:48am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-happened-to-base-colon/16513 "2018-10-19T00:48:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sukera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Sukera](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Sukera)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 2:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-happened-to-base-colon/16513/21 "2018-10-24T14:18:54Z")

</div>

> [@DNF](#):
>
> They _were_ part of Julia, and new users get confused when they try to run example code found online.

I don’t think developers of a language are responsible for external tutorials and example code (except that provided in the documentation). It’s on the authors of those tutorials to specify the version used during the tutorial.

> [@DNF](#):
>
> Right now there is, in fact, some text explaining when using v0.7 might be useful. Perhaps that text should just be moved up and highlighted.

I agree - this would probably solve most questions of “why doesn’t this example from place y work anymore”, but as far as I can tell those are not the majority of questions about this (at least here on Discourse). As far as I can tell, the number of people updating older code and asking about why it doesn’t work anymore far outweigh those just newly learning julia (there might a be a large hidden figure here though). Those would certainly also be served well with a more direct message of “hey, use 0.7” on the download page. Maybe even something like

> Updating code from before Julia 1.0? Use Julia 0.7 for deprecation warnings!

directly below the “Download Julia 1.0” button would be a nice addition.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DNF](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dnf/32/10191_2.png) [@DNF](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/DNF)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 3:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-happened-to-base-colon/16513/22 "2018-10-24T15:13:35Z")

</div>

> [@Sukera](#):
>
> > when they try to run example code found online.
> 
> I don’t think developers of a language are responsible for external tutorials and example code

And I don’t see how ‘responsibility’ is relevant. I’m just pointing out why version 0.7 might also be of interest to new users.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 3:34pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-happened-to-base-colon/16513/23 "2018-10-24T15:34:35Z")

</div>

Well, asymptotically they have worked for a fraction of the language age that will converge to 0 😉

I have a somewhat pragmatic approach: given that developer time is scarce, I would rather see it focused on things other than keeping an implicit history of the language in `Base` just to be able to guide users about an upgrade path _after_ the deprecation period has expired. Especially since we have [amazing tools](https://github.com/JuliaComputing/FemtoCleaner.jl) to update code.

Of course, if someone wants to maintain a parallel version of Julia with nice deprecation messages going back to ancient versions, they are welcome to do so (it is conceptually trivial, just a lot of tedious work). This could of course live in a package. Ultimately all of the discussions about what the language _should_ do in these cases boils down to someone putting in the work.

[Previous page](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-happened-to-base-colon/16513.md?page=1)