FPGAs are actually not that hard to program, in theory. If you understand basic logic gates (and/not/nor/etc) and other logic concepts (flip-flops, latches, clo

FPGAs are actually not that hard to program, in theory. If you understand basic logic gates (and/not/nor/etc) and other logic concepts (flip-flops, latches, clocks) you can understand vhdl or verilog. And then you can write your own vhdl/verilog code (really, is it code though?). The actual difficult part is using the tooling. Intel's and AMD's development environments are designed for professionals, so they're hard to work with if you're just starting out. Add to that a liberal sprinkling of annoying bugs and workarounds, and it's actually quite frustrating to do if you aren't getting paid for the effort.