Do I need to use Visual Studio to program in C #?

You do not need Visual Studio for anything, totally optional. In fact even the code is not necessary, although it starts to have a bit more complication. An IDE helps a lot to get productivity, and the better the IDE the more advantages it has, so VS full is just the most interesting.

The rest of the question is confusing and I do not get it, but I always recommend people to use .NET Core . .

Complementing Maniero's answer, you do not really need any IDE to program, with .NET Core for example you can program with notepad (in the example more roots), for example:

dotnet new console

Open your favorite editor:

Notepad Program.cs

Now the code:

using System;

namespace test
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("alterando código pelo Notepad");
        }
    }
}

Change WriteLine to something of your choice.

dotnet run

Result:

Belowisalinkwith.NetCoreCLIcommands

link

Now a personal opinion, and I did on an old PC that I have (normal Core i5 / 4gb / Hdd) I installed Ubuntu Desktop, VS Code and JetBrains Rider (paid but I like) rs. I managed to get along with both of them to solve simple things in projects:)