AutoLISP interpreter in Rust/WASM
a CAD workflow invented 33 yrs ago
Get picks like this daily. Today's launch numbers, the top launches, AI and tech news, and a daily opportunity pick, straight to your inbox.
Want to reach these readers? Sponsor an issue.
HN · launched Dec 26, 2025 · 137 upvotes (top 8%) · 1 view
Niche: programming languages and interpreters · 161 launches, 2 in the last 7 days ▼ -75% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 161 launches in programming languages and interpreters →
Could you build this?
Partial Building a simple LISP evaluator in Rust/WASM is straightforward, but fully supporting AutoLISP's historical AutoCAD dialect, stateful CAD environment primitives, and DXF/SVG rendering requires deep legacy format knowledge.
What it would actually take: Requires an AST parser and tree-walking interpreter in Rust compiled via wasm-pack to WebAssembly. The hardest part is reverse-engineering AutoLISP's proprietary entity-handling primitives (`entmake`, `ssget`, `command`) and implementing an accurate DXF/SVG CAD geometry generation engine. Needs expertise in compiler construction and AutoCAD's internal entity relationship models.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: AutoCAD with COM/.NET integration, Modern ECAD tools, ATLAST (Forth), Emacs, GIMP scripting
Concerns raised: Autodesk neglecting AutoLISP in favor of .NET, AutoLISP becoming truly obsolete in AutoCAD, Mobile browser usability issues
Feature requests: Parenthesis matching/highlighting, KiCad export (symbols + footprints), CSV import/export workflow
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 2715 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #218 of 2716 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 58 days after the earliest competitor.
- SolidCraft · hn · 2026-10-13 · 142 upvotes · similarity 0.69
- Octopii, a runtime for writing distributed applications in Rust · hn · 2025-12-09 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.65
- rok · github · 2026-10-25 · 15 upvotes · similarity 0.64
- A Haskell programmable-CAD environment, in the browser with WASM · hn · 2026-07-07 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.63
- dx-rust · github · 2026-10-28 · 42 upvotes · similarity 0.63
- VT Code · hn · 2026-05-30 · 16 upvotes · similarity 0.61
- cadcraft · github · 2026-10-07 · 2379 upvotes · similarity 0.61
- solvecraft · github · 2026-10-07 · 379 upvotes · similarity 0.60
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.