It'd be great if it could describe the performance of code in detail, but for now just adding a skill to detect if a bit of code has any infinite loops would be a quick and easy hack to be going on with.
I think that's the joke. In a sci-fi story, that would make the computer explode.
The halting problem isn't so relevant in most development, and nothing stops you having a classifier that says "yes", "no" or "maybe". You can identify code that definitely finishes, and you can identify code that definitely doesn't. You can also identify some risky code that probably might. Under condition X, it would go into an infinite loop - even if you're not sure if condition X can be met.
> You want it to run until you tell it to stop,
No? Many programs I don't want to run until I tell them to stop.
Even then, this reduces it to irrelevance.