as i said, if it makes sense, i'd totally allow using external libraries! maybe i should make that clearer since quite a few people get hung up on that
Also, heck, it's a challenge, we all want in, please make it so :)
If I can outperform Julia by 50% in C++, but I have to write 10x code. I won't bother with C++.
If you manage to have that in the end, that's a very valuable promotional information.
For one of my master courses, I had to write 200 lines in python. C++ solution would have been in the thousands. My colleague solved it in 10 R lines. R is on my list now :)