All, I messed around with VHDL last year. I found this a great book to learn VHDL best practices: http://www.gstitt.ece.ufl.edu/courses/eel4712/labs/free_range_vhdl.pdf The book is free but you can also buy a printed copy at http://freerangefactory.org/
I started with GHDL: https://www.fpgarelated.com/showarticle/20.php and then progressed to a Nexys4 FPGA board. Lots of fun. Just a few more resources to add to the mix. Cheers, Warren P.S The CPU I built with it: http://minnie.tuhs.org/Programs/UcodeCPU/index.html
