In my humble opinion, and also having helped lots of friends both in and out of tech, one of the best ways to learn is to find a couple of really good books on

In my humble opinion, and also having helped lots of friends both in and out of tech, one of the best ways to learn is to find a couple of really good books on programming and read them cover to cover (got this idea myself from an article on learning programming). One thing is you need to find books that are tutorials and not references (as a mechanical engineer, you probably have seen the difference yourself). A good place to start is Python, and then possibly C programming - the reason is for C requires you to learn a lot of the internals of a computer - Hmm, you probably had to take a programming course back in college (Fortran?) so you maybe able to pick up Python quickly. Although, some people don't like to just book learn and need a course to keep them on track. ... if you want guided instruction (besides just online courses), to do things on the cheap, you can also audit classes at your local college - just find some key courses in Computer Science and ask the professor if its okay to sit in. I did this for two years for a second interest of mine, music-theory.