
Pong was written with zero lines of code - sethvargo
https://www.quora.com/How-many-lines-of-code-was-Pong/answer/Victor-Volkov-3?share=1
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greenyoda
The game also has an interesting history:

"Prior to working at Atari, Alcorn [the engineer who created Pong] had no
experience with video games. To acclimate Alcorn to creating games, Bushnell
gave him a project secretly meant to be a warm-up exercise. ... The prototype
impressed Bushnell and Dabney so much that they felt it could be a profitable
product and decided to test its marketability."[1]

As to why Pong was implemented in hardware rather than software: the first
Intel microprocessor, the 4-bit 4004, was released in 1971 and the 8-bit Intel
8008 was released in 1972.[2] Pong was created in 1972, so at the time
microprocessor chips would have been expensive and esoteric components with a
limited supply. (The 8008 chip cost $120 in 1972, which would be $725 in
current dollars.) Meanwhile, minicomputers made of TTL chips were large and
cost many thousands of dollars.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor)

