Different strokes for different folks, man. Help contribute to the research/dev community by helping affect the research/dev community where it matters.
"But they are focused on deep neural networks" - No. They're really not. If anything, they're focused on making matrix operations faster and faster; where the natural result is deeper and deeper networks. But, why not submit a pull request to a highly mature library and add these features so that you can have maximum impact instead of something fairly basic.