Any computable function can be incorporated into a program using while-loops (i.e., "while something is true, do something else"). For-loops (which have a fixed iteration limit) are a special case of while-loops, so computable functions could also be coded using a combination of for- and while-loops. The Ackermann function is the simplest example of a well-defined total function which is computable but not primitive recursive, providing a counterexample to the belief in the early 1900s that every computable function was also primitive recursive.

Ackermann function | Church-Turing thesis | computable number | constructible function | primitive recursive function | Turing machine