Forgive me for only considering parametric polymorphism as the real thing :) Ad-hoc polymorphism = overloading functions or methods within a class Subtype pol

Forgive me for only considering parametric polymorphism as the real thing :) Ad-hoc polymorphism = overloading functions or methods within a class Subtype polymorphism = overloading methods from the superclass. Java is fine for working with objects, but it's just a terrible language for working with primitive datatypes. Part of the reason it's not really used for performance-critical code.