Question

So the whole Java Date/Calendar/GregorianCalendar thing is obviously a joke. What’s the right Date class to use?

Edit: Building an SDK for third parties on Android where the application needs to provide a date

More Edit: Things that make this so obviously a joke:

• 99% of Date is deprecated
• Date’s Year is offset from 1900
• Date’s Month is zero-indexed while day is one-indexed
• Dates are mutable
• You’re supposed to use a Calendar to create a date…
• … except you really have to use a GregorianCalendar
  • Do a significant percent of developers want to use a different calendar?
• Calendar.getTime() returns a Date
• There’s no Date math (like how far apart are two dates in years)
  • Messing with milliseconds since epoch doesn’t count
• You can’t chain parts together to get an expression (like the date one year ago today)
• Probably more stuff

Answer 1

Joda-Time. Even on Android.

If you want to stick to Java SE classes, it depends on what you’re trying to do.

Edit: You keep changing your question. Date and Calendar.