For me, it's because memories are not trustworthy (rose-colored glasses). Also, I had less experience back then. And we as an industry didn't know any better.

I got started in programming in Borland Pascal and Borland C++. Because of nostalgy, I've tried using them for fun again ten years ago and boy is there a reason I stopped using them in the first place. Sheesh.

Example OWL snippets:

  for (int index = 0; index < count-1; index++) {
    int len = GetStringLen(index);
    TAPointer<tchar> buf(new tchar[len+1]);
    GetString((tchar*)buf, index);
    *outStream << (tchar*)buf << _T('\n');
    //delete buf;
  }
  ...

  TClipboard cb(*this, false);
  if (cb.EmptyClipboard()) {
    int len = GetStringLen(index);
    HANDLE cbhdl = ::GlobalAlloc(GHND,len+1);
    LPTSTR buf = (LPTSTR)::GlobalLock(cbhdl);
    GetString(buf, index);
    ::GlobalUnlock(cbhdl);
  ...

  class tGastValid : public TEdit {
  public:
   tGastValid(TWindow *Win, short ID) : TEdit(Win, ID) {}
   void EvKillFocus(HWND);
  DECLARE_RESPONSE_TABLE(tGastValid);
  };
  DEFINE_RESPONSE_TABLE1(tGastValid, TEdit)
  EV_WM_KILLFOCUS,
  END_RESPONSE_TABLE;
  void tGastValid::EvKillFocus(HWND hWnd) {
    GetParentO()->SendMessage(WM_COMMAND, DB_BTGAST, 0);
    TEdit::EvKillFocus(hWnd);
  }

That said, Borland had really good class libraries. If I had those libraries in a modern language, hey that wouldn't be so bad. But these languages? No, thank you.