+new Date() - Is this good practice?

Question

So we had the Discussion today in our company about +new Date() being good practice or not. Some prefer this way over new Date().getTime().

In my opinion, this is pretty convenient but on the other side one would say it's harder to read.

Are there any pros or cons besides the obvious "It's harder to understand for people not familiar with the unary operator"?

Answer 1

The getTime method appears to be a huge amount faster:

Why is this the case?

Here's what happens when you call the getTime method on a Date instance:

1. Return the value of the [[PrimitiveValue]] internal property of this Date object.

Here's what happens when you apply the unary plus operator to a Date instance:

1. Get the value of the Date instance in question
2. Convert it to a Number
   1. Convert it to a primitive
      1. Call the internal [[DefaultValue]] method