> It would be much easier for many users to be able to say "starts with x", "ends with y", "has abc in the middle" as 3 separate statements than to have to derive the regex that does it.

This seems like a less error-prone and more testable way of writing regular expressions in code too! Writing out the individual portions of a regular expression might be a ton more verbose, but it's because regular expressions hide a ton of complexity with "write-only" shorthand.