Attaining multiple dispatch in widespread object-oriented languages

Multiple dispatch allows determining the actual method to be executed, depending on the dynamic types of its arguments. Although some programming languages provide multiple dispatch, most widespread object-oriented languages lack this feature. Therefore, different implementation techniques are commonly used to obtain multiple dispatch in these languages. We evaluate the existing approaches, presenting a new one based on hybrid dynamic and static typing. A qualitative evaluation is presented, considering factors such as software maintainability and readability, code size, parameter generalization, and compile-time type checking. We also perform a quantitative assessment of runtime performance and memory consumption.