Actually, not quite, not with FPGA. Sure, you can use an HDL to synthesize a custom microchip, in which case you indeed would be "building hardware", but you can also target an FPGA specifically, in which case you would essentially be programming a kind of a computer in a way similar to how it was done on those (early) switchboard-based computers that were configured by manually making wired connections between a fixed set of logical and arithmetical devices. You could say that one would be "building hardware" in such case as well, but since the system could be easily reconfigured at any time so that it could perform a different function, to me it looks more like programming... (I guess, the right way to look at this is as something where the distinction between hardware and software gets blurred to the point that any serious argument about the meaning of words becomes, well, meaningless.)