Nothing is sticking in the last 3 lessons

For me its also complicated. But there is a simpler solution. I asked a professional programmer, who showed me a very simple solution. int min = a; if (b<min) min=b; if (c<min) min=c; if(d<min) min=d So for example, if a =8, b=6 the min variable will change to 6. but if the next variable is 12, the variable will remain the same. I think it is the simplest solution so far.

Ternary operators like the ? and : are really just conveniences for more experienced programmers. It's just a shortcut if you don't want to write down an entire if else statement just to assign values to one or two variables. So just ignore those for now, I'm confident you'll come across those again in the future when you've completely understood if and else. To be completely honest though, if this is your first time EVER touching programming, it's going to be hard. When I entered this course, I already learned the basics from a failed attempt at self-teaching myself C++ and a tiny bit of Java knowledge. But the early phases of learning C++ was quite frustrating. So just hang in there! It only gets easier after this.

you don't have to use the ternary operator to solve the tasks. ternary operator: is a short way to write if-else-constructs (conditional assignments).

/*
 * << if-condition >> ? << then-assign-this >> : << else-this >>
 */
int minimum = ( a < b ) ? a : b;

would be the same like this:

int minimum;
if(a < b) {
    minimum = a;
}else {
    minimum = b;
}

(a < b) ? a : b; // this code would fail because it isn't setting a value
(a < b) ? minimum = a : minimum = b; // this code would fail because it is branching code logic
minimum = (a < b) ? a : b; // correct because it is used to set a value
return (a < b) ? a : b; // correct because it is also used to set a value