Question

What is the difference between an object, instance, and reference? They say that they have to create an instance to their application? What does that mean?

Answer 1

An object and an instance are the same thing.

Personally I prefer to use the word “instance” when referring to a specific object of a specific type, for example “an instance of type Foo”. But when talking about objects in general I would say “objects” rather than “instances”.

A reference either refers to a specific object or else it can be a null reference.

---

They say that they have to create an instance to their application. What does it mean?

They probably mean you have to write something like this:

Foo foo = new Foo();

If you are unsure what type you should instantiate you should contact the developers of the application and ask for a more complete example.