The 4 minute mile was amazing because of the four minutes, not because someone managed to run a mile. Amazing feats in the face of incredible constraints are inherently worthy, I'd say.
Better analogy in context of this thread that is
He meant the "movie budget" could be arbitrary chosen to satisfy the "feat under huge constraints".
Impressive but not necessarily deserving of the monicker: "best ever".
Right, which is exactly why that isn't a good analogy to something where the budget was fixed, and the 'greatness' isn't an aesthetic judgement, but whether it can be done.
The greatness of a movie is not measured by its budget, nor is the greatness of a program measured by its number of lines or memory footprint.
Do you see now why your analogy is not as good?
Maybe making an oscar winning movie with great CGI on $1000 is more appropriate