The System.DateTime class in .NET packs a good-enough amount of properties and methods. The Get-Date cmdlet leverages these properties and methods by means of encapsulation. The Get-Date cmdlet, by default, pulls the current date and time of the system, and allows you to pick child objects from it, or quickly tie them together as formats.

Besides these operations, the cmdlet also allows you to pass simple string formed like date and time, and converts the input string into the DateTime object.

While Get-Date takes into account your current locale, the type accelerator, DateTime, seems to work on YMD- or the MDY-formatted date-time.