New to VHDL and FPGAs (new uni course)

Hi. Just started a new course at uni where FPGAs are pretty central. I'm really enthusiastic about electronics and I mess around with my solder iron almost daily and I love to bring what I learn at uni home with me (I have many times learned something at a lecture and then done it in practice at home the same day). I don't find it as motivating to do this with an FPGA as I have never come close to actually needing one in a project, a mcu has always been more than enough. I also see that the pin count of FPGAs are pretty high and there is no internal memory to them, I just feel like an FPGA is not the first thing a hobbies tries to master. The reason I'm making this thread is because I like electronics so much and I want to understand VHDL and FPGAs to a little deeper level than what this uni course have to offer. I never find it satisfying to just know what is needed for that particular lab assignment etc, I want to know a little bit of what's actually going on.

At uni we use the Altera DE2 which is a little bit too expensive for me to buy. I was wondering there is an FPGA answer to the arduino or something along those lines? And if not, is it possible to simulate an FPGA? Also, what type of projects from a hobbyist' perspective would be suited for an FPGA? It's not that motivating to include an FPGA in a design when I know that a MCU will do an equally if not better job, I would like to use an FPGA for something that an FPGA is suited for.

Quite nice project after first step is to do VGA card on CPLD/FPGA. This would be great alternative to 2x16 displays, great learning.
Personally I started with Xilinx xc9572xl. This one is cheap, JTAG(loader) is easy to do.

And if you could learn abou both, FPGA and processors architecture?

There is a Verilog processor called J1 (https://hackaday.com/2010/12/01/j1-a-small-fast-cpu-core-for-fpga/). I find it very instructive, based on this you can understand much better how a processor works. And its just 200 lines of Verilog!

But it is not VHDL.

Also, both Altera and Xilinx have simulation tools, that are very efficient. You should try it.

I found the Altera DE0-nano which seems like a really good start, $99 is acceptable, there seems to be free software as well

We are going to build a processor using an FPGA at uni in a couple of months so there's a lot to learn in the weeks to come. I'll buy this DE0-nano and start messing around with it

There is also https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/AES-S6MB-LX9.htm which might be interesting. It isn't a large FPGA, but it does have USB and Ethernet. It is also in the sub-$100 range. The DE0 has more LEDs that are easier to get to, but doesn't have ethernet. There will eventually be SDR (software defined radio) boards at lower prices, but at the time they are in the 500-1000 range. SDR has a lot of computationally intensive, structured operations that do well in FPGAs.

I've found that university courses don't do a good job at teaching practical HDL.

Both altera and xilinx has simulation tools.

At $49, the BeMicro CV is the least expensive FPGA board that I know offered from a major source (Arrow Electronics).

You can also find several low-cost boards on eBay. Personally I've experienced bad quality control from such sources (chances of a dud are fairly high).