There are hobbyist who wire up an LED, make it blink and get immense satisfaction out of that. There are also hobbyist who putter around with a scanning electron microscope in their shed, and everything in between.

There are hobbyist who learn the things you mention and more.

> Programming in HDL is fundamentally different from C++ or Python..

Ok? And cheese making is fundamentally different from radio astronomy. Yet there are hobbyist pursuing both.

> I just don't get the allure of fpgas from amateurs who don't need to use them for work.

Let me give you an example. One summer when i was younger I have found a Xilinx Spartan dev board in a dusty bin in our hackspace. Nobody around me did know anything about it, it was probably a donation originally. I spent about two weeks playing with that thing. The most advanced stuff I ever got working was some example code found on the internet which synthetised a pong game through a vga connector. It was generating the video signal through just turning its outputs on and off in the right patterns. That was total magic to me. I spent the time understanding every line of the code and modifying it to do different things. I was goofing off, learning about tech, and having a great time.

I’m not saying this is the only way to enjoy an FPGA, but it certainly illustrates that hobbyist can get value out of one.

HDL, Logic Gates, State machines + custom startup code + blah blah blah --> became ???

GP is looking for "???" to materialize.

With that said, I'm learning FPGA's using TinyFPGA just to add it to my tool box.