C# vs C++ (features)?

C# / .NET has a lot of built-in libraries that generally makes it faster to develop in - you can get more functionality for the amount of code you write. As another answerer indicated, it is also easier to debug in. C++ indeed gets compiled down, and so its top-speed will slightly outperform that of C#, but it is rare that this will actually come into play - 99% of the time your performance is hindered by not optimizing your code, rather than the virtual machine (CLR) C# runs on.

The bigger drawback for C# / .NET, I think, is that you are definitely tied to Microsoft. C++ can be compiled / run on other OS's, but users will always need the .NET framework to run your application if in C# (this is not much of a problem if you are developing a web application). Java has many similar properties to C# (memory management, libraries) and does not tie you to Microsoft, although again a user will need the Java VM to run your app if you go that route.

C++ compiles to native machine language so it's faster. It requires you do your own memory management (managed C++ is an exception I think, but I have not used it.) It's harder to debug for these reasons.

C# has modern memory management where you don't have to manually deallocate memory making it easier. C# is interpreted byte code which tends to make programs easier to debug.

C#.NET forms are easy to work with to created applications with GUI. .NET has a lot of functionality making some things easier to do than the standard C++ libraries, which are mostly lower level functionality.

James Gosling, who created the Java programming language in 1994, and Bill Joy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, the originator of Java, called C# an "imitation" of Java; Gosling further claimed that "[C# is] sort of Java with reliability, productivity and security deleted."