This talk struck me as conflicting in a sort of have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too kind of way. The wrinkles part[1] summarizes a lot of what this individual is advocating. Paraphrasing (with equivalent liberal handwaving of details as the talk does):

I want to write FPGA code like any other high-level programming language (but quickly dismiss that the hard part of developing native HDL is in fact that it's fundamentally a lot more akin to architecting physical hardware).

I want to use FPGAs because they're powerful (but only when a conceptual design aligns with a traditional microcontroller architecture).

I want to use FPGAs because they're flexible (but I need to nerf proprietary building blocks that endow specific devices with competitive edge, or trade significant performance in other ways to do so).

I want to commodify the development peripheral market (but only if they conform to a certain commercially trademarked and weakly defined spec[2] inherently constrained to low-frequency applications where sloppy SI is presumed to be inconsequential).

I want to standardize high-performance interfaces (so arbitrarily "abandon standards you don't like" and simply write your own, but only if they're not "annoying"...and look like a custom FIFO with specific signal labels).

I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but the positive feedback loop generated around this topic needs a stability check.

[1] https://youtu.be/ME_e06ApxJA?t=2080

[2] https://digilentinc.com/Pmods/Digilent-Pmod_%20Interface_Spe...

FPGA evangelists like this really need a reality check. Programming in RTL is not easy, and it's not really a skill that most people need, so it doesn't make a lot of sense as an educational tool.

The "killer app" for hobbyist FPGAs might be some sort of "SoC builder" tool that lets you build a specific microcontroller around a few high-performance cores, and then program it like software.

But don't worry. Since 2000, mainstream FPGA programming has been right around the corner.