Mastering Polymorphism and Software Design Principles in Python

A Practical Guide to Writing Clean, Maintainable Code

Max N
4 min readMar 31, 2024

As software systems grow in complexity, adhering to well-established design principles becomes crucial for maintaining code quality, extensibility, and maintainability. In this article, we’ll explore polymorphism, a fundamental concept in object-oriented programming (OOP), and its relationship with popular software design principles like SOLID, DRY, and KISS.

We’ll also provide practical examples in Python to help you understand and apply these concepts effectively.

Polymorphism: The Chameleon of OOP

Polymorphism is the ability of an object to take on many forms. In other words, it allows objects of different classes to be treated as objects of a common superclass.

This is achieved through method overriding and method overloading. Method overriding occurs when a subclass provides its own implementation of a method that is already defined in its superclass.

Method overloading, on the other hand, allows a class to have multiple methods with the same name but different parameters. Here’s an example of method overriding in Python:

class Animal:
def make_sound(self)…

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Max N
Max N

Written by Max N

A writer that writes about JavaScript and Python to beginners. If you find my articles helpful, feel free to follow.