I don't think there's a straightforward solution.
As you've said, we have the Organization SObject which we can query to find certain environment information, such as:
SELECT Id, InstanceName, IsSandbox, Name, OrganizationType FROM Organization
This will tell us if we're on a sandbox environment, but it won't tell us which of sandbox it is.
The best solution I can offer is to include sandbox type in the sandbox type when creating them.
So if you have the following environments:
- Prod: CompanyName
- Sandbox: CompanyName.UAT
- Sandbox: CompanyName.QA
- Sandbox: CompanyName.DEV
- Sandbox: CompanyName.DEVPRO
You will be able to query Organization.Name to find the current environment type.
It's pretty messy and requires the use of a naming convention in order to work, but I think it's the easiest way for now. Probably worth a post on the Ideas site, as it would be a pretty useful feature.
Professional Edition does not include Apex. You can get a free Developer Org (or more than one) at the Salesforce Developer Site where you have full access to Apex, VisualForce and most other features like Workflow, Process Builder and case management.
Alternatively sign up for Enterprise or Performance edition on a 30 day trial as that will include Apex and Visualforce.
To deploy Apex code into Professional Edition you would need to use packages or AppExchange Apps rather than create in a Developer Org and deploy.
Deploying Apex via Change Sets is not intrinsically different than deploying other components apart from the need to have Test Classes with Code Coverage above 75%
Best Answer
No, as mentioned at the top of the Sandbox Overview in the documentation: