Maybe I'm missing something but in your two examples, what you refer to as skill is just recall. I would argue that in the context of alternative solutions, the skill would be knowing when a better alternative is needed when it isn't immediately obvious. If I knew mod wasn't available yet I neded an analogous operation finding an alternative is trivial even if I don't recall it. I wouldn't call that a skill.
It might seem obvious if A and B do the same thing then you can use A or B to move on to the next step, but many people don't think this way.
For a non programming example, you can use the handle of a shovel as a long stick. This should be more or less obvious when looking at a shovel, but I have seen people ignore shovels when looking for a stick to do something.
