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Multiple dispatch / multimethods??

Hi all,

I've been lurking this forum for quite a while now, hoping that I might pick
up some wisdom through some sort of osmotic effect - alas .... <g>
Hopefully I will one day find the time and energy to actually learn Dylan
properly - the more I find out about it the more I like it.  Except that it
doesn't appear to be headed for the "mainstream" anytime soon :-(  OTOH Java
appears very much to be in the "mainstream", and for this reason I am
currently endeavouring to overcome my distaste for statically typed
languages in the interests of  feeding the family!

I am intrigued by the notion of multimethods, and would appreciate some
feedback on the following notion:

Assume one was to adopt a convention in one's Java programs to have two
distinct class hierarchies.  The first type of class - ( call it a
"DylanClass" ) would, by convention, only ever contain instance variables,
plus appropriate setter/getter methods.  The second class would be an
abstract class (call it a "GenericFunctionClass" ) serving as a sort of
prototypical generic function.  Each actual "generic function" would then be
a descendant of the "GenericFunctionClass", containing nothing but a bunch
of overloaded constructor methods.

How close would these GenericFuntion instance then be to Generic Functions a
la Dylan? What would be the salient differences?  Could/would such an
approach be of any benefit to one's Java programs?

Many tias,

gary
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