My L&S student at Davis used R in several classes.
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What is “pure mech”? There are SO many things one can do within ME that it seems like an overly broad and thus misleading statement.
If you want to do traditional automobile engg (because I said it is an auto company) doing IC engines etc.
Some programming experience is helpful so it is not brand new in the mix of everything else.
CAD/CAM has been helpful to already have experience with for D. She was teaching others shortcuts and easier ways of doing things. Most community colleges offer a basic class if not offered at their high school. PLTW programs would cover this.
And non-CS skill - Also being able to sketch by hand will help when thinking through ideas with others. So a basic drawing class can be helpful.
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I ask again, what is “pure mech”?
Pure Mech is something that is not at the intersection of electrical, material science, or not something involving some systems work – e.g. control systems or whatever else. Not robotics. I suppose pure mech is something that involves “only” areas such as design, manufacturing, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics etc. My friend meant that you need to come in with a broader set of skills in addition to the ones that I just listed. Because the industry is growing in the EV space and shrinking in the ICE space.
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We’ll have to leave it at this, as it’s diverging from the OP’s original question. It is important for their edification in order to advise their student to correct this though. All MEs take materials. All MEs take controls. All MEs take circuits. Your friend may be opining on some theoretical ideal future, but for now, good old regular MEs are still being hired in the automotive industry.
Back to their original question, I’m with @momofboiler1. Nothing in particular is required.
Our son self taught Python over the summer, but he learned C variations, Matlab, assembler and multiple CAD programs as he needed them, both in school, and now in the workforce.
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For the benefit of the OP, here is the exact quote I got in September last year:
There is not much hiring going on right now - esp on mechanical engineering side. XXX (one of the big 3) is shrinking ICE side and ramping BEV side. So it ends up with too much existing mechanical and not enough electrical/software. So most hiring is towards EV area and towards in vehicle software and consumer services post-sale.
The person is in a position to know.
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My son took Python at the community college the summer before his senior year in high school. Perhaps that is an option?
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I don’t think anything is critical to know ahead of time. Having exposure to programming likely makes a few classes easier.
My son knew some SOLIDWORKS and programming from high school robotics and that helped this year (his first year), but it was also all taught in classes.
However bring able to have SOLIDWORKS and Matlab on his resume was good for looking for an internship. It seemed a lot of companies in our area want that experience for interns.
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I am an old engineer, and not in CS, so I may not be the best one to comment…
Back in my day, we used Fortran. My understanding is that Matlab is similar to Fortran, in that it is a number crunching sort of programming, which is very different from Python, Java or C. R and Scala are more for statistical analysis.
A kid who has good critical thinking skills doesn’t really need a lot of prep for CS classes. My college freshman is doing a combo of a social science and Information Science (which is sort of a CS lite), and she did not have any programming experience. She is doing very well in coding, and it looks like she will be a TA for a coding class next year.
That being said, there are free and very low cost online options to learn programming, so it can’t hurt to do a little prep over the summer.
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My son had Java for a year in high school.
He skipped over Matlab and took Python freshman college year and C++. He doesn’t like programming but left learning like 6 languages in coding/modeling software etc. . As an industrial engineer uses excel mostly… Lol.
I would not worry about learning anything like this for college
Learn it if your really interested in it. This will show on your apps and essay. Don’t think you need to learn anything to impress any college. Most cs kids I know just learn it since they are into that type of work and it fun for them.
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Appreciate the robust discussion my question is generating. Don’t even expect a uniform response - everything is filtered, of course, through one’s own observations. Some lines from a book I’ve recently read: “Excellent. The talk’s already started!”
It’s very encouraging that several responders have reported their kids coming in with limited skills and learnt on the fly. Again, however, some students would feel more comfortable coming in with some exposure to programs/languages/etc. that allow them to do the work without also having to learn from scratch (pun?) the scaffolding upon which the work will hang from.
I wonder if a separate thread is in order, inspired by @Luanne’s comment, that there are computer skills that help kids with their internship searches?
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Mastery at Excel! My D took a bunch of online classes and it helped immensely with her internship and coop.
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My kid had no training - other than Calc AB and HS Physics, etc. No computer language…and wants little to do with it - and said the amount of CAD, MatLab, and SolidWorks they did in school was negliigible - and he’s graduating and with many offers.
So while it may be good to have background in HS, it’s certainly not a must. And most likely have little to none.
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While certainly not required, many students want exposure to some of the tools they may need while in college. Many others are simply curious.
Our S was very interested in CS, so that make it very easy because there is a wealth of free tutorials and programming languages on the internet. So, by the time our S entered college he was well versed in Linux, Linux based IDEs, C/C++, Python, and CUDA. Did that help? Definitely! Was it required? No.
He also had access to student versions of MatLab and AutoCAD. He played around with both of those in HS . He did used MatLab in college (only one class I believe) and having experience with it definitely helped as he could focus on the actual problems and not on “how to use MatLab”. I’m not sure if free student versions or tutorials for these are still available, but you may want to investigate that on mathworks and autodesk web sites.
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Your post was very helpful, thanks! It takes time to figure out what you want to learn on your own around other classes in high school and college. And yes, being able to focus on actual problems and not first-time learning the programming around them can be a big help to some students (although others may not care).
My son actually did this over the summer too. It was just something that interested him. Now he knows more about fundamentals than most of his CompE friends. Would I recommend it in the context you’re asking about? No! 
As others have said, programming skills aren’t a necessary prerequisite for any major. However, familiarity with programming fundamentals is very helpful for any STEM student in college. For an engineering student, it’s also helpful to learn how software interfaces with hardware at the lowest levels, as modern electronic devices (such as microprocessors, microcontrollers, programmable logic arrays, etc.) are used everywhere in engineering. Therefore, in addition to learning a general purpose programming language well, I’d also recommend learning an assembly language for any microprocessor (which one doesn’t matter) for an aspiring engineering student who is interested. It forces the student to understand how modern computing devices work at the fundamental level, how to efficiently manipulate hardware, and even how to write the most efficient code.
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Respectfully, this is overkill. It is something that my son learned in the book I posted above, and he later had official exposure to in mechatronics. Unless a student is doing EE, CompE or Mechatronics though, they’ll never touch assembler. Those that do, will get it in class. It’s a big commitment for something most won’t likely won’t ever see again. Powerful tool, but It has little utility outside of a small circle.
This is a question asking about a high school baseline. Again, none is required, but Python or the C++ Version in Arduino could be fun and would build a foundation for the logic of other languages. They’re also the two most likely languages one will see again.
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