As the foremost domain expert on the subject (the subject being what I meant by my own comment), I can say with 100% certainty that it was in fact a joke, or rather a poor attempt to paraphrase Mark Twain's: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."
Of course you are right, optimization does take time, whether you are optimizing a computer program or a letter.
Things that are shorter or smaller generally take less time to produce than things that are longer or larger, it's a joke because the opposite is true in this case. Jokes can be true statements as well as falsehoods.
Of course you are right, optimization does take time, whether you are optimizing a computer program or a letter.