If you want to try patching environments you can also try Pure Data, which has origins in original max development in the 90s. Using my fork of hvcc you can build lv2 plugins. It supports a subset of Pd objects.
gen~ is not exactly a subset of max/msp, it’s kind of its own dsp environment based on some of the same principles.
Advantage of max/msp/gen~ is that you have a direct export to MOD/DPF using the MOD plugin.
For hvcc you’ll need to do a little bit more work. you can pip install hvcc to get the latest release and start converting pure data patches to c/c++ and DPF wrapper for LV2 plugins.
(sorry for taking over the thread with hvcc, just want to make people aware that there are also free and opensource patching language to plugin development options 
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