Origin: semantic overloading

In linguistics, semantic overload occur when a word or phrase more than one meaning.

• It is used in ways that convey meaning based on its divergent constituent concepts.

What is function or method overloading

Ability to create multiple functions of the same name with different implementations.

• Allowing one function to perform different tasks depending on context.
• Overloading is a form of polymorphism.

Implementation

function getInfo(value: string | number): string | number {
  if (typeof value === "string") {
      return `Hello, ${value}!`;
  } else if (typeof value === "number") {
      return value * value;
  }

  // handle unexpected types
  throw new Error("Invalid type"); 
}

Usage

// overload (good), same function names
function Person[] FindPersons(string nameOfPerson) { ... }
function Person[] FindPersons(date dateOfBirth) { ... }
function Person[] FindPersons(int age, string dogsName) { ... }

// non-overloading unique functions (bad)
function Person[] FindPersonsByName(string nameOfPerson) { ... }
function Person[] FindPersonsByDOB(date dateOfBirth) { ... }
function Person[] FindPersonsByAgeAndDogsName(int age, string dogsName) { ... }

Tradeoff

You get consistency in naming, but at the cost of ambiguity about exact implementation.

Why use it

• Improve readability of code.
• It allows the programmer to write functions to do conceptually the same thing on different types of data without changing the name.
• Your function may want to work with some optional details.