I don't really want to go in depth into programming, I just want to know what I'm looking at if I ever come across anything like that at my job (mechanical engineering) and maybe solve some simple problems.
I learned C and Java in my first year in college, but it's all mostly forgotten. I'm leaning towards Python since I read it's relatively simple and used a lot nowadays, and it's what my teachers used later on in college anyway.
C is the way to go my friend. The popular languages such as Python which you mentioned, are just C in a trench coat. It's all abstraction. If you understand C, you will be able to understand any language.