You're not alone in preferring to program rather than try to learn GRASS. I do all my spatial modeling using a combination of Python/Numpy/GDAL/OGR/Shapely/SQLite. I liked Arc/Info and ArcView 3.2, but not ArcGIS. Even though I have a copy on a Windows computer in the lab, all I use it for is to look at maps and export them to Adobe Illustrator as soon as possible. I'll quit using it totally (except probably for teaching, can't find a way out of that yet) as soon as either Quantum GIS is further improved or I finish programming my Mac GIS visualizer.