Developing audio plugins can be a daunting at first. Except for knowledge of C++, one has to have knowledge of digital signal processing, GUI development. However, the first obstacle is getting to know a good plugin development framework. JUCE is pretty much the industry standard in this regard. Unfortunately, the JUCE quickstart is not very beginner friendly. It will start to explain the Projucer, a custom system that creates XCode and Visual Studio build files.