FWIW Rust has "The Rust Book" as their primary long-form documentation, separate from their reference documentation. It's a common starting point for people new

FWIW Rust has "The Rust Book" as their primary long-form documentation, separate from their reference documentation. It's a common starting point for people new to the language. I read it in chunks as I was getting started. I'm not sure how it compares to those works of the past (perhaps less detailed?), but I found it much more approachable than most languages' documentation and more in-depth than most languages' tutorials. The old ways may not be entirely lost.