> (though I understand Java is capable of as good or better
> performance than C/C++)
In execution speed, yes. In RAM usage and startup time, definitely
not.
Also, not in execution speed. Good C++ is always faster than Java code. However, crappy C++ is slower than crappy Java code. Because most programmers are crappy, nearly everything on the internet says that Java is faster. From practical experience with C++ and with Java 7 (Oracle's latest and greatest), with only moderate optimization on identical programs, I know C++ to be at least twice as fast.
The only place Java has an advantage is memory allocation--and even that's not really fair; the JVM preallocates everything, so "allocating" and "deallocating" are almost no-ops. If you want to do that, there are JIT compilers for C++ . . .
Ian