Connecting a function call to a function body is called binding. When binding is performed before the program is run (by the compiler and linker), it’s called early binding. You may not have heard the term before because it’s never been an option with procedural languages: C compilers have only one kind of function call, and that’s early binding.

The problem in the program above is caused by early binding because the compiler cannot know the correct function to call when it has only an Instrument address.

The solution is called late binding, which means the binding occurs at runtime, based on the type of the object. Late binding is also called dynamic binding or runtime binding. When a language implements late binding, there must be some mechanism to determine the type of the object at runtime and call the appropriate member function. In the case of a compiled language, the compiler still doesn’t know the actual object type, but it inserts code that finds out and calls the correct function body. The late-binding mechanism varies from language to language, but you can imagine that some sort of type information must be installed in the objects. You’ll see how this works later.