What is the method MemberwiseClone() doing?

Question

I am confused with this code below,

Developer devCopy = (Developer)dev.Clone(); 

Clone method of Developer class just creating a Employee clone, then how developer get another clone of developer.

public abstract class Employee {     public abstract Employee Clone();      public string Name { get; set; }     public string Role { get; set; } }   public class Typist : Employee {     public int WordsPerMinute { get; set; }      public override Employee Clone()     {         return (Employee)MemberwiseClone();     }      public override string ToString()     {         return string.Format("{0} - {1} - {2}wpm", Name, Role, WordsPerMinute);     } }   public class Developer : Employee {     public string PreferredLanguage { get; set; }      public override Employee Clone()     {         return (Employee)MemberwiseClone();     }      public override string ToString()     {         return string.Format("{0} - {1} - {2}", Name, Role, PreferredLanguage);     } }   Developer dev = new Developer(); dev.Name = "Bob"; dev.Role = "Team Leader"; dev.PreferredLanguage = "C#";  Developer devCopy = (Developer)dev.Clone(); devCopy.Name = "Sue";  Console.WriteLine(dev); Console.WriteLine(devCopy);  /* OUTPUT  Bob - Team Leader - C# Sue - Team Leader - C#  */  Typist typist = new Typist(); typist.Name = "Kay"; typist.Role = "Typist"; typist.WordsPerMinute = 120;  Typist typistCopy = (Typist)typist.Clone(); typistCopy.Name = "Tim"; typistCopy.WordsPerMinute = 115;  Console.WriteLine(typist); Console.WriteLine(typistCopy);  /* OUTPUT  Kay - Typist - 120wpm Tim - Typist - 115wpm  */ 

Answer 1

Because the method MemberwiseClone() is doing this for you. See the documentation

The MemberwiseClone method creates a shallow copy by creating a new object, and then copying the nonstatic fields of the current object to the new object. If a field is a value type, a bit-by-bit copy of the field is performed. If a field is a reference type, the reference is copied but the referred object is not; therefore, the original object and its clone refer to the same object.

Whenever you see a method you don't unerstand, you can trace who has declared it (in Visual Studio, I guess), and in turn see its documentation. That makes things pretty obvious most of the time.