I would not dismiss C or C++ as viable avenues of progress. There are viable C++ / C only deep learning libraries https://pjreddie.com/darknet/ https://pjreddie

I would not dismiss C or C++ as viable avenues of progress. There are viable C++ / C only deep learning libraries https://pjreddie.com/darknet/ https://pjreddie.com/darknet/, available that are easily ported and embedded C++ can be pretty pleasant to write. We currently use C++14 on a embedded Power processor with custom vector unit and 16kB of SRAM and it works like a charm.