July 26, 2026
Plus sign, maximum chaos
Overloaded Overloading
Python’s plus-sign drama has commenters arguing whether the trick is clever or just confusing
TLDR: Python doesn’t allow multiple same-named functions with different inputs, but it does let objects define what the plus sign does. Commenters split between calling that clever, calling it confusing, and arguing pedantically over whether it even counts as “overloading” at all.
A simple question — why does the plus sign work for both numbers and words in Python if Python supposedly doesn’t do “overloading”? — turned into the kind of nerdy food fight the internet lives for. The article’s basic answer is actually pretty friendly: Python won’t let you make multiple versions of the same function with different inputs, but it will let objects decide what the plus sign means by using a special built-in method. In plain English, the language says, “You can’t have two separate recipes with the same name, but you can teach your custom object how to react when someone hits +.”
But the comments? That’s where the real entertainment starts. One camp was deeply suspicious of the whole thing, with rf15 basically saying that “a + b” can be a total mystery if you don’t already know what those objects are. Translation: cute trick, potentially awful for actual humans reading code. Another crowd jumped in with classic internet nitpicking energy, insisting this isn’t “operator overloading” in the dramatic sense at all — it’s just shorthand for calling a built-in method. Yes, the semantic police arrived right on schedule.
And then came the drive-by comedy. smitty1e dropped a dry little jab — “self aged well” — mocking the article’s old-school Python wording like a sitcom character entering just to roast everyone and leave. So while the article tried to calmly explain a language feature, the community turned it into a familiar online spectacle: half classroom debate, half pedantic cage match, with a side of snark. Python may be readable, but apparently its plus sign still knows how to start drama.
Key Points
- •Python does not support method overloading by defining multiple methods with the same name in one class; later definitions replace earlier ones.
- •The article contrasts Python with Java, where methods with the same name can coexist if they have different argument signatures.
- •Python supports operator overloading through special methods such as `__add__`.
- •A custom class can implement `__add__` so that the `+` operator works on instances of that class.
- •To simulate overloaded method behavior in Python, the article recommends writing a dispatching method that inspects argument types or optional parameters and forwards to helper methods.