I think your "for a Node guy" is doing more work than "Why not Java?". I mean, it's true that if you don't work in the world of low level performance thought that C++ doesn't bring much to the table.

But to be clear: Node and Java (and anything with a managed heap) doesn't have a paradigm for things like RAII or inlined parametrazation or copy-by-value or move semantics because it doesn't have a way to express them. But those are useful tools and important in some regimes.