As I have been reading and learning F# it has been very

helpful to fall back on my Lisp knowledge to help me understand what is going

on.

There exists an enormous population of Lisp users who use two very

bastardized versions of Lisp called AutoLisp and VisualLisp respectively. The

interpreters for these two dialects exist only inside of AutoCAD and

Intellicad. Their was a VisualLisp stand alone interpreter years ago but unless

you are odd like me you have probably never seen it let alone still have it installed

on your machine.

There are gigantic libraries of AutoLisp code at engineering

companies world wide. Some of these companies are giants like DeBeers (sp?) the

diamond company whose mine CAD automation tools are very often written in

AutoLisp.

Now the Lisp folks have always been a sort of second class citizen to

the C and C++ developers of AutoCAD extensions because the full AutoCAD API is

not exposed to them. VBA and VB folks are third class citizens who have even

less access then the Lisp guys.

When .Net came along AutoDesk tried to expose

the full API to C# developers as well. So many C++ folks simply use the C# API

now because it's easier to work with and they get mostly full access to the

underlying API so for most .arx's (AutoCAD's way of allowing extensions to

itself . It is basically just a .dll that exports certain specific

symbols and is then given the .arx extension vice .dll) C# is nmore than enough.

Well all the Lisp

folks kind of got left in the dark on this one because most of them are just

drafters, designers, and engineers who learned Lisp because it was an easy way

to extend AutoCAD and automate a lot of their daily tasks. These folks cannot

develop in C# because they have absolutely no understanding of how to develop

in an imperative language. They know nothing but functional Lisp syntax. C#

blows their minds and C or C++......well lets not even go there.

If F# truly

has access to everything C# does then you should be able to build .arx's using

F# and if somebody came up with some basic AutoLisp to F# tutorials showing how

directly F# maps to Lisp and then showed them that the entire ObjectArx API was

now available to them you could literally get buy in from hundreds of thousands of new

users who have never touched an imperative language who are overjoyed to

finally have access to everything they have always wanted in a syntax they can relate to.

However you would

have to make it very easy for them as in take a whole bunch of common AutoLisp

code and AutoLisp functions and show the direct conversion to F# so they could

copy paste to their hearts content until they understand how to use it. IE a

bunch of the functions from AfraLisp would be a good start.

It could of course

fall flat on it's face and get no buy in but given how long these guys have

been relegated to second place I think a lot of them would love to finally have

a .Net language they can understand and use without having to wrap their head

around all that hard C# stuff.
I would also add that the AutoDesk .Net C# API may be several version of .Net back from the current so it might be a while before you could actually get an .arx to build but I don't know for sure what would be required compatibility wise to pull it off.