intermediateDesign Patterns
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.
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