Alternatives to FastDateFormat for efficient date parsing?

Question

Well aware of performance and thread issues with SimpleDateFormat, I decided to go with FastDateFormat, until I realized that FastDateFormat

Answer 1

As of Java 8, one can use DateTimeFormatter along with the the Java 8 Time API to both parse and format dates. From the documentation:

This class is immutable and thread-safe.

It's recommended to use this class if possible for new work going forward instead of using SimpleDateFormat.