# The Unreasonable Efficiency and Effectiveness of Multiple Dispatch: Your Favourite Examples

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-unreasonable-efficiency-and-effectiveness-of-multiple-dispatch-your-favourite-examples/119477>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** question, multiple-dispatch\
**Created:** [September 17, 2024, 3:07am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-unreasonable-efficiency-and-effectiveness-of-multiple-dispatch-your-favourite-examples/119477 "2024-09-17T03:07:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 21

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**Author:** ![Benny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/49beb7/32.png) [@Benny](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Benny)\
**Post date:** [September 24, 2024, 8:59am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/the-unreasonable-efficiency-and-effectiveness-of-multiple-dispatch-your-favourite-examples/119477/21 "2024-09-24T08:59:43Z")

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> [@xiaodai](#):
>
> Isn’t multiple-dispatch kinda like overloading on steroids?

[Yesn’t](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-multiple-dispatch-the-same-as-function-overloading/4145/17). Short version: Both are kinds of polymorphism where a function has multiple methods, though multimethods is only synonymous with multiple dispatch. Function overloading is compile-time polymorphism over compile-time information like types or arity. Multiple dispatch works on runtime information instead and is typically thought to be done at runtime, but Julia’s type inference can resolve dispatch at compile-time, which confuses people used to statically typed languages’ starker divide between static and dynamic.

> [@xiaodai](#):
>
> In Julia, a function’s definition could be set in multiple locations depending on which method is dispatched. This makes it hard to understand the code or it could give you the false sense that you understood it but the implementation could literally be unchanged from under your feet but defining a method with a more restrictive type signature.

This is a downside of polymorphism in general, which is why static analysis is such a big want. It’s easier to do by eye in statically typed languages with type declarations, but some rely on type inference, too.

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