The methods to distribute food and to purify water are largely solved. If it weren't, then the developed world would not be able to support such large populations. It's a distribution and education problem in areas so afflicted. If you want, you can probably buy some tractors and water filters right now and have them shipped to poor villages. The techniques needed to make fertilizer or purify water by boiling are well known. What is lacking is the industrial capability to manufacture enough and the supporting infrastructure, and the unwillingness of foreign entities to spend money on it and hostility by groups that benefit from the status quo (be it the warlords that will seize the goods, the arms dealers that want the conflict, or anyone else who will accept bloodshed and misery in exchange for money). A political issue that no amount of "world changing" technology is going to fix. Not interesting.
And besides that, tinkering around with regex to do neat things, while clever, doesn't mean that that cleverness will transfer to other tasks. Would you trust your rocket scientist to give you brain surgery just because both tasks are considered intelligently prestigious enough to be in a popular idiom proclaiming their brilliance?
