Should I use GregorianCalendar or Date for a birthday field?

Question

I'm a little bit confused about using the class GregorianCalendar and Date.
What is the difference?

For instance: I have a field in a Person object that represents the date he was born. Do I have to use Date or GregorianCalendar?

What is the best use for them?

Answer 1

If you were writing down the details on paper, would you write down the date of birth as a date, or would you write down a calendar with a circle around the date?

You would write down the date. Date is a concrete date. Calendar is a tool for working with dates.

Answer 2

I would use Date to represent the date of birth. Use Calendar (and child classes) to manipulate dates.

Answer 3

Both Date and Calendar classes suffer from poor APIs. You should use the Joda Time library instead.