Which most likely wasn't predictable for him.
FPGAs were never that maker friendly, due to the whole ecosystem.
It probably was NRND on mouser/digikey by then... not that there was much choice in 2013- you went with what you had instead of $1000+ dev boards.
alt Hacker News
It probably was NRND on mouser/digikey by then... not that there was much choice in 2013- you went with what you had instead of $1000+ dev boards.