The main reason I don't use Java is because of the (de-facto) tooling - maven in particular is completely opaque to me and seems very resistant to experimenting

The main reason I don't use Java is because of the (de-facto) tooling - maven in particular is completely opaque to me and seems very resistant to experimenting to figure out how it works (though I am having to work with deeply nested poms and custom plugins). I've used build/release management/dep management tools from/like go, python, ruby, node, erlang, make, autotools and cmake and I've never before had to read a manual to tweak an existing setup. Go is probably my favourite ecosystem because everything is very simple. I suspect Rust will be good as well.