On: Java Developers

[kyllo]

You can do OOP with only ad-hoc polymorphism, which is just method overloading, which is what Java and C++ do. Actual parametric polymorphism isn't necessary for OOP, and there are non-OOP languages that have it (e.g. SML has polymorphism but does not have objects).

So, polymorphism and object-orientation are orthogonal concerns. OOP is about encapsulation, inheritance, and modules that couple mutable state (attributes) and behavior (methods).

[agumonkey → kyllo]

For the curious, Ocaml mixes both, its object model is parametric (see: http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/u3-ocaml/ocaml-objects.html)

[pjmlp → kyllo]

> You can do OOP with only ad-hoc polymorphism...

Which is still polymorphism. I purposely did not enumerate all CS forms of polymorphism, but can get more detailed if you will.