What is the Prototype pattern? When would you use it over calling a constructor directly?

The Prototype pattern creates new objects by cloning an existing, fully-configured instance (via a clone() method) rather than building one from scratch through a constructor. It's useful when object creation is expensive (e.g. involves a database call or heavy computation) or when you need many variants of a complex, pre-configured object — cloning a template is far cheaper than reconstructing it field-by-field each time.