OK, I understood the subtle difference where function overloading is different from multiple-dispatch. Basically, the difference is whether which method to call is chosen at run-time or compile-time. Now, I know everybody’s said this, but without a clear example this sounds VERY obvious, given that C# is statically typed and multiple-dispatch languages (apparently to me, … Read more
Polymorphism is the facility that allows a language/program to make decisions during runtime on which method to invoke based on the types of the parameters sent to that method. The number of parameters used by the language/runtime determines the ‘type’ of polymorphism supported by a language. Single dispatch is a type of polymorphism where only … Read more
Julia compiles a specific version of your function for each set of inputs as required. Thus to answer part 1, there is no performance difference. The parametric way is the way to go. As for part 2, it might be a good idea in some cases to write a separate version (sometimes for performance reasons, e.g., to … Read more
Multi-dispatch is the ability to choose which version of a function to call based on the runtime type of the arguments passed to the function call. Here’s an example that won’t work right in C++ (untested): class A { }; class B : public A { }; class C : public A { } class … Read more
What you are asking for is called multiple dispatch. See Julia language examples which demonstrates different types of dispatches. However, before looking at that, we’ll first tackle why overloading is not really what you want in Python. Why Not Overloading? First, one needs to understand the concept of overloading and why it’s not applicable to … Read more