When RISC-V and open source FPGA toolchain become more popular, I guess more and more programmers will come back to play with hardware.
As far as hand soldering an FPGA, you’re gonna have a hard time finding any that aren’t BGA simply because of all the IO. They exist, but probably not in dev board form as they’re really limited in IO and cells.
i think there are still xilinx CPLDs in TQFP too.
should be boards floating around for any of them. if not, well, only reason you'd want to hand solder it is because you're making your own board. a simple dev board is great practice to make sure you've got your package correct.