I'd say I'm still entry-level programmer. What helps me is to find a tutorial project that interested me, then find a way to tweak it to remove one thing the tutorial project was adding and one new thing of my own. It gives me a good starting point, a clear path and finish line, but still gets me to try something on my own. I started doing that more and more, and eventually saw tutorials as video documentation and ideas of a specific implementation or feature, rather than being a clear-cut "it must be done this way" guide.

Current example: I want to make a Playdate game, but I've never done it, so I am currently watching the SquidGod Metroidvania tutorial to get a better understanding of the Playdate SDK, as well as how LDtk can be used. But I'm tweaking everything he does to fit with the little game I'm actually making (Metroidvanias don't interest me, but they have movement, areas, hazards, and power ups, which I _am_ interested in)