Ah, this brings back memories. XD
Thanks to the earliest game development books I got hold of, breakout has been my gaming equivalent of 'hello world' for quite a while.
If you know what you're doing and don't worry too much about the details you can write a functional breakout clone (no powerups or the like though) in a few hours.
Like many old games it's one of those things that can do complicated things with very simple code...
In fact, now I'm going to have to write another version of it, aren't I? XD
Ah well...