Both Object Oriented Languages in the C family of languages, C++ predates Java by almost a decade(initial versions). Java compiles to byte code which is then interpreted by the Java Virtual Machine, this allows Java applications to not require recompilation to support different platforms. C++ compiles to machine code(assembly) and needs to be recompiled for every new platform. Java has memory management features like garbage collection which make it easier to work with as the programmer does not need to allocate and dispose of memory manually. C++ requires the user to destroy objects and memory space in order to prevent memory overflows. Both Java and C++ are strictly typed languages, with C++ being a bit more lax than Java. Native C++ code is usually faster than Java however recent advances in JIT (Just-In-Time compilation) have allowed Java to have 90-95% the speed of native C/C++ code. Since Java is compiled into byte code it is by far easier to Reverse-Engineer, though this issue can be addressed somewhat through obsufication.