To folks who wax lyrical about FPGAs: why do they need a future?
I agree with another commenter: I think there are parallels to "the bitter lesson" here. There's little reason for specialized solutions when increasingly capable general-purpose platforms are getting faster, cheaper, and more energy efficient with every passing month. Another software engineering analogy is that you almost never need to write in assembly because higher-level languages are pretty amazing. Don't get me wrong, when you need assembly, you need assembly. But I'm not wishing for an assembly programming renaissance, because what would be the point of that?
FPGAs were a niche solution when they first came out, and they're arguably even more niche now. Most people don't need to learn about them and we don't need to make them ubiquitous and cheap.
I agree with another commenter: I think there are parallels to "the bitter lesson" here. There's little reason for specialized solutions when increasingly capable general-purpose platforms are getting faster, cheaper, and more energy efficient with every passing month. Another software engineering analogy is that you almost never need to write in assembly because higher-level languages are pretty amazing. Don't get me wrong, when you need assembly, you need assembly. But I'm not wishing for an assembly programming renaissance, because what would be the point of that?
FPGAs were a niche solution when they first came out, and they're arguably even more niche now. Most people don't need to learn about them and we don't need to make them ubiquitous and cheap.