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I've seen that with Delphi. The unique factor was that the examples were not a basic call of the function but an actual real world practical sample that usually solved the problem one was looking for.

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I was a Delphi programmer for a few years, professionally, when it first came out in the 90s. I worked with their developer products (and for Borland directly on Delphi/Kylix/C++Builder, eventually) until the mid-2000s. I've never seen the match of Borland's docs, before or since, particularly as integrated with the IDE's coding features.

There are a number of programming languages and APIs with excellent documentation, but theirs were above and beyond.

The Delphi IDE help was good but the printed Delphi manuals were just outstanding. I have fond memories of learning much through those manuals.

I have them in print still, including the MS-DOS ones (TP), if you don't have them any longer, they are available at bitsavers.

I had forgotten the “brick” you used to buy with a few CDs (or floppies) and a whole stack of books.

Things sure were heavy before the internet got fast.

I always loved this site: http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/RTL.asp?Name=ansicomparestr

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