How do I apply my [limited] Python knowledge to the emulation scene?

[AnyOldName3]

Yeah, C#/Java (which is basically the same) is a good place to start before C++. The only issues with this is that really bad programmers will usually give up on C++, and, in fact, programming in general, as many things are unnecessarily complicated, whereas they might be able to get things to work, albeit nastily in Java/C#, and then you end up with the masses of Java software that's really poorly written and gives the language a reputation of being slow.

If you're doing a course instead of blindly copying code off the internet, though, then you're less likely to become one of these bad programmers, so none of this actually applies to this situation at all.