There are literally thousand of discussions on this to be found: http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...%2B%2B+vs+java

The objectivity of the comparisons vary greatly from side-by-side feature listings to all-out religious flamewars. The truth can be found somewhere in between. The wiki entry on it is probably a decent starting point to wade in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...va_and_C%2B%2B

C++ is higher-level than Java, in that it has a more flexible type system and can make abstractions that Java cannot. On the other hand, Java has garbage collection.

The truth is, Java sucks, horribly. Java is pretty much as crappy as a language can be. But it has garbage collection, which makes it better than C++, but much worse than pretty much every other language. Scala, a language that compiles to the JVM, is indisputably better than Java.