AutoLISP is a small, dynamically scoped, dynamically typed Lisp language dialect with garbage collection, immutable list structure, and settable symbols, lacking in such regular Lisp features as macro system, records definition facilities, arrays, functions with variable number of arguments or let bindings.

Vital LISP was a superset of the existing AutoLISP language that added VBA-like access to the AutoCAD object model, reactors (event handling for AutoCAD objects), general ActiveX support, and some other general Lisp functions.

Since then, Autodesk has ceased major enhancements to Visual LISP and focused more effort on VBA and .NET, and C++.

[5][6] AutoLISP has such a strong following that other computer-aided design (CAD) application vendors add it to their products.

There are thousands of utilities and applications that have been developed using AutoLISP or Visual LISP (distributed as LSP, FAS and VLX files).

[7][8] A simple Hello world program in AutoLISP would be: Note the final line inside the function definition: when evaluated with no arguments, the princ function returns a null symbol, which is not displayed by the AutoCAD command-line interface.