Object-Oriented Python

9 Polymorphism

This chapter is about the second major tenet of OOP: polymorphism. Its component parts are from the Greek: the prefix poly means “much” or “many,” and morphism means “shape,” “form,” or “structure.”

So, polymorphism essentially means many forms. I’m not talking about a Star Trek–style shape-shifting alien—in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Rather than one thing taking on many shapes, polymorphism in OOP is about how multiple classes can have methods with the exact same names. This will eventually give us a highly intuitive way to act on a collection of objects, independent of what class each came from.

OOP programmers often ...