How can I tell the inheriting class to not call its base class' parameter-less constructor?

Question

I was surprised to find out that the parameter-less constructor of my base class is called any time I call any constructor in a derived class. I thought that is what

Answer 1

As others have pointed out, a derived instance must call call one of its base class' constructors.

If you want to control the execution of a base class' initialization logic, remove its default constructor and replace it with something like this:

public class Base {
    // Base has no default constructor
    public Base(bool initialize) {
        if (initialize) {
            // ... logic here 
        }
    }    
}

And the derived constructors look like this:

// Derived1 executes the initialization logic
public Derived1(): base(true) {}

// Derived2 does not
public Derived2(): base(false) {}