If you want to write your own chess engine you need at least some basic knowledge about a programming language. Most chess engines are written either in C or C++ but there are also a few others written in Java, Pascal or even in Assembler. C or C++ is probably the best choice. If you don't know C already it might be worth to learn it in order to create a chess engine. One of the best books to learn C is in my opinion 'The C Programming Language' from Kernighan & Ritchie. That book which is rather a slim book should be sufficient to learn C properly.
In order to create the source files you need either an editor preferrably with syntax highlighting like Emacs, VIM or an IDE (Integrated Developement Enviroment) like Eclipse or Visual C/C++ from Microsoft. If you don't own a copy of MS Visual C/C++ already you don't need to spend any money in order to get a decent compiler. If you're running Windows you might want to download the MinGW suite with the GNU C/C++ compiler gcc or you could get the freecomandlinetools from Borland. There is also a compiler from Microsoft available for free which comes with an own ide and a debugger as well. If you happen to own a Linux box you won't have any problems at all as you should already have gcc on your system installed. For the Linux world is also a compiler from Intel availabe which is free for noncommerial use.
While I was writing on Roce I figured out that documenting the source code is very important. If the project keeps growing it's only a matter of time till you forget what this variable or that function exactly is supposed to do. Often I invented some variables on the fly just to test if something works as expected and forgot to delete these variables afterwards. Often I replaced some functions by other functions and forgot to take the old one out. In short, I had quite a mess in no time. So documenting the code certainly helps you to understand what you did a few weeks or months ago.
In order to start writing your own engine you need to dive a bit into theory at first. Bruce Morelands site is a very good start to get an idea how MiniMax/Negamax and how Alpha Beta cut offs work. Once you read and understand that stuff you should also visit Ed Shröders site. The programmer of Rebel and Pro Deo has a website which I can highly recommend. But for the very beginner it might not be the right place to start.