Granted I'm no JS expert, but I believe that Python would be a better fit for OP due to the larger number of scientific computing libraries and OP's background

Granted I'm no JS expert, but I believe that Python would be a better fit for OP due to the larger number of scientific computing libraries and OP's background as a mechanical engineer in addition to what you just mentioned. Someone else advised that OP leverage their ME background to help them learn programming, which IMO Python is very well suited for