Monthly Archives: May 2010

Polymorphism in C++

Director at Feabhas Limited
Co-Founder and Director of Feabhas since 1995.
Niall has been designing and programming embedded systems for over 30 years. He has worked in different sectors, including aerospace, telecomms, government and banking.
His current interest lie in IoT Security and Agile for Embedded Systems.
Niall Cooling

The term polymorphism is central to most discussions in and around object oriented design and programming. However I find that many people are still confused or don’t have a complete understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of using polymorphism.

I have heard many different simplified definitions of the root term for polymorphism, usually relating to chemistry or biology. Rather than trying to justify the name, I’ll give you my very simplistic definition from a software perspective.  Simply put polymorphism means:

Multiple functions […]

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