C++ vs Java constructors

Question

According to John C. Mitchell - Concepts in programming languages,

[...] Java guarantees that a constructor is called whenever an object is created.

Answer 1

Java constructors can call another constructor of the same class. In C++ that is impossible. http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/ctors.html

POD's (plain old data types) are not initialized via constructors in C++:

struct SimpleClass {
    int m_nNumber;
    double m_fAnother;
};

SimpleClass simpleobj = { 0 }; 
SimpleClass simpleobj2 = { 1, 0.5 }; 

In both cases no constructor is called, not even a generated default constructor:

• A non-const POD object declared with no initializer has an "indeterminate initial value".
• Default initialization of a POD object is zero initialization. ( http://www.fnal.gov/docs/working-groups/fpcltf/Pkg/ISOcxx/doc/POD.html )

If however, SimpleClass itself defined a constructor, SimpleClass would not be a POD anymore and one of the constructors would always be called.