I'm new to c# and have tried out some console based application. I have earlier experience off programming in Java, and Thus I prefer to use a manual compiler to make it easier to move around the files and subdirectories (I didn't like the Java IDE's) in the project folder with a bit off overview.

I'm using a compiler called mono. Why you might ask? Well, people simply said it was good. In accordance to what I heard c# has a good capacity, so it shouldn't be a problem doing such a simple task as creating a save-file and writing data to it (there are even standards in JDK).

Maybe is it the compilers wrong, maybe am I doing somthing wrong, but the compiler simply doesn't have wbf acces or somthing like that (whatever that means) what I have seen it also gives me a message that says I'm missing Assembly reference. So googling around I have to get somthing called moonlight for the mono compiler it seems. But I can't find any instructions or tutorials of how to use nor to install moonlight so I can get any usage for it in the compiler. Furthermore, it says moonlight is made for making Unix application, but I wanted to make a console-based application for windows that does such a simple task as writing a message to a save-file. Sure I'm not using the compiler that they recomended me to because I don't want to pay for a fancy IDE, but is this really what they call time-saving as I heard c# is? Anyways, that's an irrelevant question so I hope I don't get any haters just because of that. I just wanted to know a few things:

1.What is an Assembly reference at the first place?

2.What Directories/namespaces do I need to use in order to make such an application?

3.Why doesn't mono have the same directories as visual studios?

4.(it's not a must) be kind and give some sample code