Clone with better performance

Question

I want to create deep copy method and I found 3 ways to execute it

1-deep copy with pass each property 1 by 1

2-using reflection

3-using serializatio

Answer 1

The first option, manually deep copying your values, will be the most performant by far.

Reflection will introduce quite a bit of overhead, as it is (relatively) slow to access data.

Serialization is adding a huge cost, as it serializes the data into a temporary structure, then reverses the process to set. This is again, very slow.

The only advantage to option 2 or 3 is that its potentially easier to implement, and reusable across multiple types. The first option has to be hand-written per type, but is much faster (and more efficient in memory usage than option 3, as well).