I really fail to see why so many people are not wanting to use C for embedded systems, 400mhz processors, what are you planning on doing that demands that much processing power it is crazy. Efficiency and overhead is what it boils down to.
I have nothing against python when it is used in an appropriate application, I have plenty of python scripts taking care of all kinds of tasks on my server, but that is because the C equivalents would take far to long to write and not offset the loss in performance. We are not doing anything close to powerful enough to justify co-processors of that magnitude, or a language of that high level. Yes I have considered implementing a co-processor, but it is just another microcontroller from freescale, which would allow me to load a RTOS.
The reality is C and asm are what people use for these applications in the real world, and while using other languages MAY allow you to work more efficiently in the 6-weeks we have, in the end what does it prepare us for?
I recommended that everyone reads this article by jon "madddog" hall, a programming god,
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9647 he has been around from the beginning and has some very interesting insight.
Hope i did not step on too many toes.
Brennan Ashton