It's pretty clear that the arrival of Visual Lisp ruined Autolisp. Do you really want a bunch of drafters running around with the capability to manipulate all that Windows functionality through Active X? No one was sitting around asking for object oriented programming in AutoCAD's most popular API, but for some reason it was added. Me? I like a more pure form of programming that McCarthy originally envisioned when he axiomatized computation by creating lisp.
"Doesn't Visual Lisp add a rich library of additional list processing functions? Not just OOP?"
Yes. Well kind of. But those are part of what ruined autolisp as well. The entire IDEA of lisp is that you're creating your own language as you go. If you can't write vl-every, vl-some, and vl-sort in your sleep then you shouldn't be programming in autolisp anyway.
"You don't ever use functions written by others?"
No, I do not. I actually only program in the original 7 functions used by the first lisp interpreter and I build from there: quote, atom, eq, car, cdr, cons, and cond
"But that doesn't allow you to do arithmetic or even set variables."
Precisely. And that brings up another thing. Variables ruined autolisp as well. Lisp was originally a functional programming language. That was the focus. We didn't' need to convolute things by asking the computer to remember these arbitrarily named and ill-defined entities. Not to be overly rigorous, but what even is a variable? I will not entertain such a concept unless I have a rigorously defined way to construct it.
"No variables?? How do you write anything that has actual application?"
Who said anything about application? Unlike these simple-minded drafters, I think of Autolisp as more than just a convenient API for AutoCAD. In fact, I don't even use AutoCAD or do drafting of any kind. I simply found it to be a nice interpreter for lisp.
"Ok so you don't do any drafting, you don't use variables or arithmetic of any kind when programming, and you only use the original 7 functions from the first lisp interpreter. What then do you even use autolisp for?"
Recursion.
"Ok but I can't really think of a single useful thing you could do with just those functions and recursion. You haven't supported your point very well that Visual Lisp ruined Autolisp."
It's pretty clear that the arrival of Visual Lisp ruined Autolisp. Do you really want a bunch of drafters running around with the capability to manipulate all that Windows functionality through Active X? No one was sitting around asking for object oriented programming in AutoCAD's most popular API, but for some reason it was added. Me? I like a more pure form of programming that McCarthy originally envisioned when he axiomatized computation by creating lisp.
