The Howdy Glossary

Polymorphic programming languages support polymorphism, a feature that allows an object of different classes to be treated as objects of a common superclass. This lets programmers write code in a way that doesn't depend explicitly on the specific class of an object. In practice, polymorphism is implemented through method overriding and dynamic method dispatch. In languages where functions can be overloaded or generic, it's referred to as ad-hoc polymorphism; in languages like Haskell with typeclasses or Scala with implicits, it's known as parametric polymorphism (also called generics). The ability to use entities of different types interchangeably is useful for creating reusable and maintainable code while providing flexibility without compromising security or type safety.