Overloading in Java and multiple dispatch

Question

I have a collection (or list or array list) in which I want to put both String values and double values. I decided to make it a collection of objects and using overloading o

Answer 1

What you want is double or more general multiple dispatch, something that is actually implemented in other languages (common lisp comes to mind)

Presumably the main reason java doesn't have it, is because it comes at a performance penalty because overload resolution has to be done at runtime and not compile time. The usual way around this is the visitor pattern - pretty ugly, but that's how it is.