This is documented to be more performant.
The substitution was made on frontend code, too (i.e., the one in /static),
because Date.now() is supported since IE 9, and we are life supporting only
IE 11.
Commands:
find . -name *.js | xargs sed --in-place "s/new Date().getTime()/Date.now()/g"
find . -name *.js | xargs sed --in-place "s/(new Date()).getTime()/Date.now()/g"
Not done on jQuery.
This simply shares a common implementation and makes no judgements on the validity of its use. The string created is not a secure random number, so some uses of it may not be applicable.