What advice or pointers would you give to start learning & using mma for real problems?

I tried to learn it a few times and it worked great for toy problems, but when I tried to write an entire script a la python/c/matlab, I failed miserably

The solution is basically a cross correlation in a colour channel between the image and a zebra pattern. That can be done in a few lines in more than one language.

Also, 7 lines is hardly a good metric to judge the general effectiveness of an environment or language.