Mathematica is a strange language (aka Wolfram language) with a steep learning curve; it has some weird behavior but is a really good integrated environment. I do most of my computations with R (mostly statistic computations, for which R excels) but when things get difficult, I switch to Mathematica to get the job done.
Here, I am presenting some code I have generated for doing mostly spatial analysis with raster files. Though there are a few good programs (SAGA, different packages in R, QGis, MapWindows, ArcGis) that make some of the operations I have required to do, an advantage in using Mathematica is that it is well suited to process matrices and, at the end of the day, raster files are but data matrices and Mathematica does the job easier!
One of the difficulties of using Mathematica (and the advantage) is that it contains a lot of built-in functions that help in processing matrices or any other data structure. However, sometimes is necessary to built custom-made functions, here is when the pain begins!
I hope the code presented here helps people advance in their research work just as I have benefit from different contributors in the Mathematica community.