Are Autodesk Products Unimportant?

In an article on CADCAMNet, Steve Wolfe writes:

Because Autodesk’s products are cheap and used for relatively unimportant tasks, such as drafting, customers can get by without upgrading them or renewing their subscriptions during tough times. In contrast, the products of Dassault Systèmes and Parametric Technology are critical to new product development.

Steve is wondering whether Autodesk is a bubble stock citing the 31% drop in revenue in Q3 of 2009. Frankly, I do not wish to comment on the financial aspects of what Steve wrote. But I sure as hell would like to comment on the statement that he made about Autodesk products being “cheap and used for relatively unimportant tasks“.

If I may, I would like to speak for the Autodesk programmers that wrote those software products along with the thousands of third party developers who develop solutions on top of Autodesk products. We most definitely do not believe that our software is used to do unimportant things. Personally, I believe such a statement is not just insulting to the 9 million Autodesk customers, but also to Autodesk developers and their partners.

If you are an Autodesk customer, I would love it if you left a comment explaining why you think what you are doing unimportant.