You should not use AWS F1 instances if you are just starting out. They will burn a nice-sized hole in your wallet and the only thing you'll get in return is confusion and frustration as a beginner.

The AWS F1 devkit and APIs are largely oriented around making OpenCL-based designs easy and fast to develop (using Xilinx's "SDAccel" framework), but if you're just starting out you almost certainly want to start with classic RTL development using Verilog or whatnot. But "traditional" RTL development is substantially more involved. The documentation and the environment itself is largely oriented with the assumption you're a semi-experienced RTL developer and there's no real way around that part. (For example, even when using OpenCL, you're going to have a hell of a time optimizing anything without understanding real RTL/digital design principles.)

The F1 also has a non-trivial build system, meaning you have to do literally everything on AWS. Not a deal-breaker, but considering the equivalent of a "Hello World" will take you something like 30+ minutes to compile using something like a t2.2xlarge, and anything beyond that will be multi-hour (yes, this isn't an exaggeration) -- you probably don't want to just be spending money on every minor iteration.

I would suggest getting a cheap Lattice FPGA and using Project Icestorm, which is a free FOSS Verilog toolchain, in order to get started. This will cost you closer to $20 USD. https://www.latticesemi.com/icestick and http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ -- there are allegedly good books on Verilog, but I'm afraid I can't recommend any myself...

After that, when you've got a big enough design where the monstrous VU9P -- the Xilinx chip used in the F1 -- is relevant to your interests, you'll know. :)

Source: I worked on moving/porting our designs to the AWS F1 (traditional RTL based stuff, not HLS/OpenCL -- and it was surprisingly challenging, up-to and including talking with AWS engineers directly to resolve bugs in their datacenters. And I was the software guy!)