However the other thing is that as a system of analog tools it may be able to achieve all sorts of effects that might require a lot of processing power, development time, and sources of entropy for randomization to match. In short I think not just that what was built was easier for the person who built it, but might also be significantly cheaper comparatively.

on edit: of course they can't distribute their machine the same way you can code but that's the tradeoff

Probably the monitor to camera part is easier to do in software, but as other comment says the author probably is more familiar with monitor and cameras and understand better how to tweak the values to get nice images.