Avoid to use Java directly, if you need any Java libraries choose Clojure to wrap it, that strategy works well for me. Scala is another alternative here. It's a bit more complicated to work with Java libraries but great for writing code.

For a general programing task my choice is Python, stable, mature, well documented with an extensive library support. iPython is a fantastic shell for it, that's my interface to Python libraries and programs, good for developing, running code, debugging or for a quick peep to the documentation. Highly recommended.