I think there is still the question, though, of why the same method that saves the field keys when you manually save a post in the WordPress admin could not be replicated for when you create a post programmatically.
I understand why the field keys are faster, but sometimes you don’t want to hard code those values. It makes it harder to read the code (imagine handing your code over to a new developer, who has to determine what all those field keys are referring to), and it’s not as portable.
