IDA Plugin Writing in C++

After spending a lot of time going through the header files in the IDA SDK as well as looking at the source to other people's plug-ins, I figured there should be an easier way to get started with writing IDA plug-ins. Although the header file commentary is amazingly thorough, I found it a little difficult navigating and finding things when I needed them without a lot of searching and trial-and-error. I thought that I'd write this tutorial to try and help those getting started as well as hopefully provide a quick reference point for people developing plug-ins. I've also dedicated a section to setting up a development environment which should make the development process quicker to get into.