VHDL HC237 3-8 Decoder with latches

VHDL does describe digital logic, but doesn't it also use programming concepts to describe the behavior of the digital circuit? For instance, you can use if then statements, cases, while loops and for loops in VHDL and those are all programming concepts. What exactly do you mean by drawing out my circuit on paper first? Draw out all the logic gates that form my circuit? That is listed in the datasheet for the chip, but there are some components that don't seem to be standard logic gates.