I personally recommend to write plugins for PRISM with PHP, because it's really easy, and it has already many plugin examples pre-made for you to work with.
If you want to program with C++/C#, you will need Visual Studio C++ Express or Visual Studio C# Express.
If you want to program with Java, you will need Netbeans or Eclipse.
And if you use the PHP option then all you need is Notepad. If you're new to PHP then Netbeans for PHP is a good free solution.