Whenever you are looking for a supplier for something, keep in mind that there are advantages and disadvantages when choosing one.
If you are in a small niece company, and your supplier is THE BIG OLD COMPANY, you are completely at their mercy. On the other hand, they usually have vast resources you can tap, like training capabilities and software you won’t get elsewhere, or at least nor for the price.
That was our relationship with Xilinx. Yes, you get trainings and tutorials for everything, and they have a “light” version of ModelSim thrown in for free in their IDE, but on the other hand, they basically cut us off from one day to the next. And that was not even our fault.
So we went looking and found Efinix. Small, but growing, their IDE has a few edges that need to be rounded off, and they can’t afford to throw in a free simulator, so we had to spend quite a few bucks to buy that (and it was not even ModelSim we bought, so I had to re-train). But at least they are open and helpful. You ask a question in their forum, and they come back to you to help. I’ve been talking to real people who are directly in contact with the dev team. When I had a strange compiler problem, I had a fix within 48 hours. THAT is gold in a supplier.
I’m finding out that it’s a lot to take in
Yes, indeed. The step from CPU-based programming languages to Hardware definition languages is hard for most programmers, and for some, it is even insurmountable. Once you get the hang of it, it gets way easier.
I met a student once in a Reddit sub once who had issues with her code. I helped her and gave her a few tips how to improve it, and at the end, she asked me of my opinion of the project. I told her that it was a nice little beginner project, something to pass a boring Friday afternoon. Her reply: “Thats my Bachelor Thesis!*”. What looks big and difficult to master will one day look simple and meek when you look back, so don’t let it drag you down if things don’t work on the first try.