+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().

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