his serves as a good example of apt-gets stability. In apt, the name was changed to be more user friendly, while in apt-get the name remains unchanged so as not to break compatibility with old scripts.

Use apt as a first choice, but if you're scripting use apt-get. Apt-get has more stable output (meaning that the output format is left alone as much as possible so as not to break scripts which parse that output automatically). Apt-get also has some low-level commands not available in apt.