Yup, I didn't mean to belittle Hebel. I actually just meant that the lack of features is likely why I hadn't heard of it. From the looks of things it's on a nice path. You philisophy about what Hebel should be sound similar what's been done with MORB for making RBMs, and that is one of the reasons I've always like that library. Although MORB still does incur the 'working with theano' conceptual overhead.