Well, to make an (imperfect) analogy with programming tools - Houdini is like Emacs, while Blender is more like Visual Studio.
That is not to say that one is intrinsically better than the other, but for a technically-minded person (== any programmer in this case), the way Houdini works will make much more sense.
Learning either of these tools is not an easy task, but I think that starting with Houdini will feel more natural in cases like yours (SE background, interest in interactive graphics).
You can email me (see my profile here) for some more Houdini-talk!
