With the hiatus in employment due to working in the oil field I was looking for something to make me stand out and was thinking of specializing in programming. When I was younger I learned quite a few languages like BASIC, Assembly, Pascal, C, Java and a little of others.

Since I am a Mech Eng I would like to find a language that would help me write a few sample programs to show off what I can do. What languages would you suggest?