I do research in computational neuroscience for my phd. I used to work as software engineer. I also did some research in the supervision of autonomous mobile social robots. I started using Mathematica recently (Jan. 2012), but I can understand faster if you make the parallel with programming in Python, Java, Clojure, Common Lisp, Objective Caml, or C. I tend to be an FOSS advocate, but I appreciate the power of Mathematica.