> FPGAs need their "Arduino moment".

This is exactly it. Why hasn't some expert group produced a very simple open design board with a simple Arduino-like IDE for FPGAs? Make it easy to access and use, get it into the hands of makers/hobbyists and watch the apps/ecosystem explode.

As an example, one could provide soft-cores for 8051/RISC-V etc. right out of the box with a menu of peripherals to mix and match. Provide a simple language library wrapper say over SystemVerilog (or whatever the community settles on) just like Arduino did (with C++) that makes it "easy" to program the FPGA.

For apps, one good example would be putting TinyML (or any other ML/LLM models) on a FPGA. This would take advantage of the current technology wave to make this project a success.

PS: Folks might find the book FPGAs for Software Programmers by Dirk Koch et al. (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-26408-0) useful.