If you really want to stretch your mind, consider learning Verilog. Writing code that takes exactly ZERO* time to execute, and all works in parallel, is strange at first.

I got my first FPGA board from Amazon for $27 (a Tang Nano 9k), and use YoSys to program it (open source for the win!)

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* Actually, all of the code in a block executes at the same time, real world chips have delays, of course.