Verilog and VHDL are substantial learning curves in themselves. We could really do with a newbie-friendly alternative; I don't know whether http://www.myhdl.org/ might be it.
Verilog and VHDL already simplify hardware design a lot. They seem to have a great learning curve due to the nature of hardware design.
Most people gain a lot of confidence in software development and try to design hardware like they would program a system. And then they complain that Verilog and VHDL is too complex.
Verilog in particular leads you into that trap, though. Because you can write conventional sequential-execution programs in it, and usually have to when writing testbenches. The nomenclature of "process" and "task" imply they behave like software - and they do, in the simulator. Then there are the hoops you sometimes have to jump through in order to get the synthesis to behave as you want: "reg" is not always a D-type flip flop, and is mandatory in some places where it doesn't synthesise to one.
The challenge of Verilog & VHDL is not learning the language, it's learning the paradigm of hardware & HDL. Everything is parallel, nothing is sequential unless otherwise specified.
In themselves they are very simple, basic languages.
To be fair, it's Hardware Description Language, not Hardware Synthesis Language. HDLs are mostly tools to support V&V, it's just that synthesis is the most convenient way to ensure that an implementation is consistent with the HDL description.
Yeah, I believe originally all the HDLs were intended for simulation of designs which were then implemented by hand. Neither Verilog nor VHDL was processor designed for synthesis, which is probably why it's so quirky.
