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Python Polymorphism

Published Feb 20 2021

Polymorphism generalizes a functionality so it can work on different types. It’s an important concept in object-oriented programming.

We can define the same method on different classes:

class Dog:
    def eat():
        print('Eating dog food')

class Cat:
    def eat():
        print('Eating cat food')

Then we can generate objects and we can call the eat() method regardless of the class the object belongs to, and we’ll get different results:

animal1 = Dog()
animal2 = Cat()

animal1.eat()
animal2.eat()

We built a generalized interface and we now do not need to know that an animal is a Cat or a Dog.