This might sound like a joke, but it’s actually not. First, let’s define inheritance. Inheritance is the ability to use polymorphism to override a method with another implementation. You inherit from a class, and you override one of its virtual functions. This results in that code having an object that will no longer invoke the old base class method, but rather the new overridden method. Kind of easy, right?
Polymorphism Is the Ability To Have Old Code Invoke New Code
Well, there’s nothing intrinsically special about class-based OOP that prevents you from implementing the above in a functional context. In a functional programming language, you can have a reference to a function, and replace the function it’s pointing to, before passing in your function reference to some method in need of a function with the specified signature. This achieves the exact same result as « classic polymorphism. »
