For such a mission critical application (hardware design) my mind is blown by how laughably bad the HDLs are when compared to modern programming languages. Chunks of the languages aren't synthesizeable, and which bits are/aren't are not consistent across vendors. There's also IEEE standards that nobody reeeally seems to care about too much. Additionally, it's not clear from a syntax point or a types point whether or not the code you will be writing is synthesizable. You just need to "know" ahead of time. It's terrible! It makes this whole field really obtuse and hard to enter from a design standpoint.

The field really needs some fresh blood or dare I say "disruption". I'm glad people are trying to make things better.