This may be a bit of a cop out, but compiled, runtimeless languages are so astonishingly faster than Python on average (especially for things like numeric computation in loops) that you don't actually need to go out of your way to write optimized code. If this is your first systems-level language, the I'd say just focus on getting your head around things like pointers and the stack vs. heap, and you'll find that your code will be plenty fast. Only then,if you really really need more optimization, will it be worth your time to learn about advanced optimization techniques.
This may be a bit of a cop out, but compiled, runtimeless languages are so astonishingly faster than Python on average (especially for things like numeric computation in loops) that you don't actually need to go out of your way to write optimized code. If this is your first systems-level language, the I'd say just focus on getting your head around things like pointers and the stack vs. heap, and you'll find that your code will be plenty fast. Only then,if you really really need more optimization, will it be worth your time to learn about advanced optimization techniques.