The commercial PHP development IDE PhpStorm can be used to develop Piwigo plugins and themes. It has a lot of functionality and if you buy it for personal use it is not that expensive. As a student you can get a free license.
Articles about Plugin development
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Piwigo plugin development documentation
Before starting developing your own Piwigo plugins it is strongly recommended to read the plugin development documentation available on the Piwigo website. The documentation is not extensive, but enough to get you started.