[mac3n]

I found FPGA programming a mind-bender, coming from conventional (if low-level) programming.

In sequential software programming, you avoid computation until you need it. With hardware, if you have the logic to do the computation, you use it. Think of having all expressions always evaluated. Instead of conditional evaluation you select which output you want.

This applies somewhat to software on modern processors with abundant functional units (adders, FPUs, load/store units). They're running ahead evaluating as much as possible, then discarding what wasn't selected.