Specifically about C++ v Java for web development, I think the answer lies in reflection. C++ doesn't allow member introspection at runtime like Java. Many web

Specifically about C++ v Java for web development, I think the answer lies in reflection. C++ doesn't allow member introspection at runtime like Java. Many web technologies and their supporting stacks leverage reflection heavily. Look at Spring MVC. Both it and Spring in general are reflection machines. This provides a lot of easy work that's relatively safe even with duck typing.