If you’re using C++, you will need Visual Studio to compile. If you’re careful about not using any platform-specific stuff (like [FONT=Courier New]#pragma - or [FONT=Courier New]arc4random() which isn’t system specific, but VS doesn’t include it in its standard libraries), you might never need to actually open Visual Studio. UE4 has great platform-independent libraries. My art team all uses Windows, and they’ve only had problems a few time. They launch UE4, and as long as I haven’t done anything unholy, it compiles it in the background and they never actually see the code or open VS.
Blueprint is even more platform-agnostic, as it gets compiled in-engine.