> For example: in Java, methods with the same name but different argument types ("overloaded") are statically bound; whereas in Smalltalk, they are dynamically

> For example: in Java, methods with the same name but different argument types ("overloaded") are statically bound; whereas in Smalltalk, they are dynamically bound. In Smalltalk you simply have messages. An object either responds to one or it doesn't, there's no concept of overloading. A method that looks the same, but has a different number of arguments is a different method. For example, in Java you might have a print method which takes a string, or a method with the same name which takes a format string and a variable number of replacements: String print(String s) { ... } String print(String s, Object... v) { ... } Same name, different signatures. In Smalltalk, those methods would have different names: print:f [...] print:f args:v [...] Where the names of the methods are print: and `print:args:` respectively. Smalltalk generally closer to Python than C in terms of performance.