I would argue that for the job you are aiming for, you could do it more than fine with a microncontroller like a 3 bucks ATMEGA or Arduino. You would program it

I would argue that for the job you are aiming for, you could do it more than fine with a microncontroller like a 3 bucks ATMEGA or Arduino. You would program it in C, and you don't need a 60 bucks FPGA + a 200 bucks for the FPGA controller. If you are learning, meddling with FPGAs your way is awesome. But nobody is going to use that approach for serious work on production.