That's true, but that doesn't explain why the HDL IDEs lack modern productivity features or why the simulator GUIs have the same interface as 20 years ago. Iner

That's true, but that doesn't explain why the HDL IDEs lack modern productivity features or why the simulator GUIs have the same interface as 20 years ago. Inertia and vendor lock-in are better explanations IMHO. I hope with FPGAs becoming more mainstream the open source/hobbyist community will step in and refine some things, but if the big EDA shops don't take hints from the software industry things are not going to change very fast.