I kind of empathize where they are coming from, my electronics version of "this meeting could have been an email" is "this fpga could have been an arduino".

I feel like we're constantly spoiled by the clock speed of computers, they are good enough for so many things. FPGAs can make simple things a bear to implement, and you will just get there faster.

But there's a bunch of things where FPGAs are like discovering fire, all the discrete digital logic you ever wanted in the palm of your hand (until you have to meet timing).