[tfmkevin]

The "average person" cannot program for it. I've managed teams as large as 60 extremely competent full-time EDA engineers working for years on only the synthesis portion of the problem. It is FAR more complex than, say, developing a compiler. Both Xilinx and Intel have more engineers developing FPGA software tools than they do developing FPGA hardware. It's a common misconception that just any group of competent software engineers could whip out better FPGA tools if they only had access...