title: Creating Dates in Java
body: <p>I am wondering whats the proper way of creating Dates in Java? It appears the simnplest way </p>
  
  <pre><code>new Date(year, month, day, hours, mins) 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is depreciated. So how should I create Dates. I understand the recommended way is to use long but whats an easy way to get the long value of a human readable date like "2012-03-21 2:00PM" (or something similar)?</p>