For the first part... .Net Core can be developed without Visual Studio just fine, and to a certain degree so is traditional .Net. For the latter, that's more r

For the first part... .Net Core can be developed without Visual Studio just fine, and to a certain degree so is traditional .Net. For the latter, that's more runtime than language, for which Mono and .Net Core cover for reliably running on *nix. Full disclosure: I'm one of those hippies that believes Java's/C#'s model of OOP is the 3rd biggest cancer in this industry, with 1st and 2nd being Oracle and Microsoft. I hope that makes it very clear that I don't exactly like either language, but I do believe C# to be a clear improvement over Java.