content: I think Python is an excellent language, but no you won't be doing real-time motion tracking from video streams because it's slow as hell.  However, how often do people try to write high performance code in a scripting language?  Hopefully never. What could be better for a newb that wants to get things done quickly rather than spend 2 years getting a solid foundation with C and assembler?  Python has to be one of the best choices.