Software engineers can sometimes find it difficult as with a HDL you (should) describe hardware that exhibits the intended behaviour, rather than just directly describing the behaviour.
HDLs have familiar syntax that makes it seem like you can just program algorithms imperatively (for loops, if statements, functions etc) but it's all just a mean trick to catch software people out, and generally won't give the results you expect.
On top there's then the fact everything happens at the same time, the faff of making everything synchronised and making sure it meets timing and fighting the frankly awful tooling every step of the way.
Once you get it, it's fine, but you have to unlearn a lot of software muscle memory and keep the actual design work (boxes and lines) almost entirely separate from the implementation (typing your boxes and lines into a text editor).
HDLs have familiar syntax that makes it seem like you can just program algorithms imperatively (for loops, if statements, functions etc) but it's all just a mean trick to catch software people out, and generally won't give the results you expect.
On top there's then the fact everything happens at the same time, the faff of making everything synchronised and making sure it meets timing and fighting the frankly awful tooling every step of the way.
Once you get it, it's fine, but you have to unlearn a lot of software muscle memory and keep the actual design work (boxes and lines) almost entirely separate from the implementation (typing your boxes and lines into a text editor).