You are right in that it is NOT necessary, but it sure does help.  I would guess that you've never dug that deep into the Bitcoin protocol.  I have very much respect for anyone who can even understand it.  I've dedicated 100+ hours in trying to comprehend all of the crypto-jargon and its been a slow, uphill battle. My point being that if and when you need to customize / tweak your code (for some specific use case), unless you've got some sort of crypto-analyst (is that a real word?) on your team, you may find it hard pressed to achieve your goals.

BTW, the first link you sent is to a library that hasn't been updated since Oct '11 and the second was June '11. I'm sure at some point, someone thought it was a good idea to port that Java code, but it hasn't been touched since. And a .NET (dot net, ASP) search on SE came up quite skimpy (I count 2). I'm very sure there are ample and perfectly good uses for .NET, but Bitcoin is NOT one of them.