gamemaker is a good language to start with, and did the questions about how to do rotations get answered already? if not i can easily answer it.
I fail to see how doing this requires barely any cash at all… Registering GM is a mere $20 with no extra programs required. There are sources on the net for learning all programming languages from scratch for free, the only place there is to spend on is possibly graphics editing software which there are cough alternatives to obtaining. If you’re learning programming for study purposes you probably have to pay for education but thats going to be in the name of education rather than programming itself.
So far I havent spent a cent outside $20 for registered Gm 6.1, and I suppose all my education costs for studying at University - if you wanted to count that.
in the many gamemaker projects i have worked in, none of them have ever required registered.