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

Your requirement to only need to call the constructor for some derived objects is not in line with the object-oriented principles. If it's a Person, then it needs to be constructed as such.

If you need shared initialization for some objects, then you should consider creating an Initialize method or adding a parameterized constructor that will be called by the specific derived objects.

The parameterized constructor approach feels a little awkward:

public abstract class Person
{
    protected Person()
    {
    }

    protected Person( bool initialize )
    {
        if (initialize)
        {
            Initialize();
        }
    }

    // ...
}

public class Customer : Person
{
    public Customer(string firstName, string lastName)
    {
       // ...
    }
}

public class Employee : Person
{
    public Customer(string firstName, string lastName) : base(true)
    {
       // ...
    }
}