On the other hand, there are fpga boards priced comparably to microcontrollers now. It can be very refreshing and useful to escape the "programming" paradigm.

On the other hand, there are fpga boards priced comparably to microcontrollers now. It can be very refreshing and useful to escape the "programming" paradigm. Hobbyists are already contributing the value of their time which is generally much larger than the cost difference between device types, so in a sense the fpga barrier to entry may actually be higher for companies than individuals at the moment.