Are We Stuck with Lean? | Hacker News

Hacker News commenters debated proof assistants and formalized math, focusing on Metamath’s tiny trusted kernel, multiple logic systems, and fast verification.

Others said mathematicians choose tools for different goals, and that proof assistants differ mainly in foundations, trust, and usability.

Some argued LLMs will mostly change how proofs are written, not whether large-scale mechanization is possible, since it already existed before LLMs.

A commenter also compared ecosystems like Metamath, Lean 4/mathlib, Agda, Rocq, and HOL to different software tools serving different users.