Marco is right about PHP's documentation. I've felt for a long time that the quality documentation PHP provided played a major role in the language's success.
Every method and object needs five things: 1) what parameters does it need to be used or created 2) what values does it return if any 3) a simple description of what it does 4) a simple canonical example of it being used that can be copy/pasted as a template 5) notes from devs which can help elaborate on the above.
This is pretty basic, but where PHP nails this, so much other documentation completely ignores one or more parts. Finding a return value in Python docs usually means reading through a paragraph of text or using dir() from a command line. Figuring out how to use a Javascript Object can often mean jumping around MDN looking for a reference, unless the feature is super new, then all you might get is a signature. Android documentation will give you everything but examples.
Objects and functions are like parts of an engine. You need to know what each piece is used for, where it goes, how to install it and the way it all fits together.
It's true! For me, PHP's docs were an amazing on-ramp to becoming a developer "I just need a function that does something like...". A lot of the language design is annoyingly inconsistent and hard to use, but even in 2005 there were clear explanations on how to make it work.
As an experienced engineer, if I'm handed a well-designed but poorly-documented API, I can usually guess the intent and make it work, at the cost of working more slowly. But a junior engineer will be completely stymied by insufficient docs, regardless of how good the software design is.
I guess, in summary: good docs can make up for bad code. But good code can't make up for bad docs.
PostgreSQL’s documentation is also amazingly well done.
There’s also HighCharts. But not the documentation, rather the fact that I almost never felt like I needed any. The API was just so well done that you didn’t need any. That was my experience anyway.
I wanted to print out the Postgres documentation to have a physical copy and then my jaw dropped, realizing I would need to print out 7 double sided 50 page booklets if I wanted to do this! 300
in the old days MySQL + PHP became a popular combination because they both had great docs. But Oracle has let MySQL's documentation get worse and it's no longer the best
