VHDL
The concept of using software to design hardware that runs software will surely cause you endless hours of contemplation.
I wasn’t prepared for the six-gig behemoth that is the Xilinx ISE, so it’s taken me longer than expected to get anything resembling Hello World going in that environment. By comparison, the Arduino IDE is pretty incredible. There’s a lot to be said for a relatively small download and easy installation process that leads to a blinking LED in maybe five minutes. I know Xilinx and Arduino are going for entirely different audiences, but ease of installation these days ought to be a universal feature.
Meanwhile, I’m reading _The Low-Carb VHDL Tutorial_ by Bryan Mealy. I’m not confused… yet.
Why VHDL and not Verilog? Two reasons: first, all the OpenCores processors I’ve looked at are written in VHDL, so even if I were a Verilog master I’d have to learn at least to read VHDL. Second, I’ve been told that Verilog is closer to C and thus easier to learn for C programmers. I’m seeking to bend my brain as much as possible without breaking it, so I’ll choose the _harder_ language to learn.