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Asked: 2026-05-31T05:28:48+00:00

I’ve spent some time, trying to understand Clojure multimethods. The main pro multimethod argument,

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I’ve spent some time, trying to understand Clojure multimethods. The main “pro” multimethod argument, as far as I understand, is their flexibility, however, I’m confused with the argumentation of why multimethods are better than a simple if or case statement. Could someone, please, explain, where is the line between polymorphism and an overglorified case statement drawn?

EDIT: I should have been clearer in the question, that I’m more interested in comparison with the ‘if’ statement. Thanks a lot for the answers!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The difference between multimethods and a big if-statement is that you need to modify the function that contains the case-statement to add cases to the if-statement. You can add a new method without touching the previously existing methods.

    So if you define a multimethod inside your library and you want your users to be able to extend it for their own data types, that’s no problem. If you had used an if-statement instead, it would be a big problem.

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