Scala IDE support has improved a lot. I use IDEA and I have no complains at all, at least for my needs. For instance it is very quick to point out errors and to

Scala IDE support has improved a lot. I use IDEA and I have no complains at all, at least for my needs. For instance it is very quick to point out errors and to show the inferred types for expressions, functions and variables. Refactoring such as renaming and extract method work very well. I mentioned Scala because it could be more attractive (i.e. "sexy") than plain Java, and produce a more clear and concise code base (if used well). But I agree with you that you'll find many more available and trained Java programmers. If you avoid the old-style, heavy-duty "enterprise" frameworks and stick to a more straightfoward architecure, and perhaps take advantage of Java 8 features, it should be a very good platform to build upon.