Autodesk wants your input in its annual API survey. What used to be a closed survey for Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) members has been open to all for the last couple of years, and if you do any Autodesk-based development at all I encourage you to take part. Yes, that includes those of us who do most of our development in LISP. In fact, I am especially keen to see LISP developers adequately represented in this survey.
This is a one-page survey and it doesn’t take long. The full list of API surveys is on Kean Walmsley’s Through the Interface blog. Most of you would be interested in the AutoCAD survey, so here’s a direct link to that.
Kean assures us that our feedback will not fall on deaf ears, although I have yet to see any evidence of that in terms of any change to Autodesk’s decade-long policy of total LISP neglect. I guess many of us gave up hope of any improvement years ago and can’t be bothered providing feedback any more. Please don’t give up. Fill in the survey and let Autodesk know you still exist.
I am not sure what could be added to LISP, other than some modern file-access functions, such as random read/writes and directory controls.
DCL needs an overhaul, naturally, to make it less user-hostile.
LISP and DCL are excellent as OS-independent APIs, as Bricsys is showing with Bricscad for Linux. In addition, they solve the problem of what to do when gatekeeper Microsoft gets bored of supporting languages in widespread use, like VBA.
There is a vast amount that could be done for LISP. So much that I don’t know where to start.