VHDL/Verilog etc are descriptive languages, not software languages ala C/Python/Java/etc. You should have enough hardware design knowledge (at RT level) to be able to sketch your HW design in a piece of paper, and then, you are apt for writting VHDL/Verilog and putting it into the FPGA.
I really like MyHDL!
I wrote tetris in Verilog that outputs to VGA[0]. I definitely encourage anyone interested in HDLs and FPGAs to start learning.
I can still program enough to do simple things, e.g. sample an analog temperature sensor, drive a simple led display that display current temperature, average of last hour etc.
If you are learning, meddling with FPGAs your way is awesome. But nobody is going to use that approach for serious work on production.
In my experience, unless you are building something either very large and need to worry about your gate count, or something very time sensitive and need to work about component distance, you can just program and enjoy real concurrency. :)
Either you build something big enough that it doesn't make sense to make a PCB + components, and mass produce them on a medium level using FPGAs, or you aren't using FPGAs for what they are. It's fine if you are learning and toying with them, we like to hack on things, but you are never going to use them that way in a job, in production.