I have only done a small amount of FPGA programming, so my comments may not be that useful.

I have only ever used a Xilinx FPGA or CPLD, so seeing how an app would compare on different FPGA's would be interesting, although for the apps that I have developed it probably wouldn't matter that much.

I do agree that the current suits are often bulky and take a long time to learn.

My comments may not be that useful, but I love seeing any thing that is related to embedded programming on HN. Great work!