[deckchair]

Have you considered Scala? Same platform, but a much more modern and expressive language.

[alexatkeplar]

Agreed. Even when I have to write Java these days (you can't write Hive serdes in Scala), I wrap it in an SBT project and write all my tests in Specs2. (See e.g. https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow/tree/master/3-etl/hive-...)