By very poorly I would guess it would depend on how your comparing them. In my experience working with Java, C#, Scala, Python and Ruby all of them were fantastic. The only time I have ever considered a language a "deeper circle of hell" was with (large team) php and perl projects.
The comparison isn't Java to C++. It's Java to C#, Scala, even Python or Ruby. And against C# and Scala in particular, Java does very poorly.