The Dink Network

Well, you need to know how to use the map editor (either WinDinkEdit (downloadable in the Development section) or DinkEdit, included with the game). Then you also need to learn DinkC, a scripting language used to handle all the things in the game. See the Development section and look for tutorials about DinkC and other things. And you should really get the DinkC Reference

As for the programs, the map editor is (Win)DinkEdit. To create scriptfiles, you can use programs like Easy DinkC but NotePad/WordPad can be used as well to create the scriptfiles.