Many years ago, I was having lunch with a bunch of friends who were doing a Ph.D in Computer Science with a focus in theory and algorithms. And somehow the conversation got around to talking about various practical algorithms. So I, of course, said:
You want an algorithm that finishes in a finite amount of time.
So to set the record straight, almost 8 years after the fact, what I wanted to say was:
You want an algorithm that terminates in a reasonable amount of time otherwise it might as well never terminate.