polymorphism

Catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT) is an inherited genetic disorder that predisposes those affected to potentially life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms or arrhythmias. The arrhythmias seen in CPVT typically occur during exercise or at times of emotional stress, and classically take the form of bidirectional ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation.

<theory, programming> A concept first identified by Christopher Strachey (1967) and developed by Hindley and Milner, allowing types such as list of anything. E.g. in Haskell: length :: [a] -> Int is a function which operates on a list of objects of any type, a (a is a type variable). This is known as parametric polymorphism. Polymorphic typing allows strong type checking as well as generic functions. ML in 1976 was the first language with polymorphic typing. Ad-hoc polymorphism (better described as overloading) is the ability to use the same syntax for objects of different types, e.g. "+" for addition of reals and integers or "-" for unary negation or diadic subtraction. Parametric polymorphism allows the same object code for a function to handle arguments of many types but overloading only reuses syntax and requires different code to handle different types. See also generic type variable. In object-oriented programming, the term is used to describe a variable that may refer to objects whose class is not known at compile time and which respond at run time according to the actual class of the object to which they refer. (2002-08-08)

PolyMorphic Systems was a manufacturer of microcomputer boards and systems based on the S-100 bus. Their products included the Poly-88 and the System 8813.

In computing, polymorphic code is code that uses a polymorphic engine to mutate while keeping the original algorithm intact - that is, the code changes itself every time it runs, but the function of the code (its semantics) will not change at all. For example, the simple math expressions 3+1 and 6-2 both achieve the same result, yet run with different machine code in a CPU.