Hey, so I am very new to computer programming and I'm sure this question has been asked a lot here but where should I start? I took introduction to computer science probably a year ago and have am just starting to play around with rpg maker vx. Don't want to download c++ or anything that costs money until I take a class next term and can download software for free
Thanks!

You don't have to pay anything. Free visual studio: https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-express/ is all you need to start. This is full featured IDE, if you want just compiler you can get mingw and g++ in there.

Other languages are also typically free, eg. jdk for java, golang, ruby, python .. 100% free.

C++ is free to use.

Thank you guys! I didn't realize that. I'll start there