I'm about to start a mapreduce project which will run on AWS and I am presented with a choice, to either use Java or C++.

I understand that writing the project in Java would make more functionality available to me, however C++ could pull it off too, through Hadoop Streaming.

Mind you, I have little background in either language. A similar project has been done in C++ and the code is available to me.

So my question: is this extra functionality available through AWS or is it only relevant if you have more control over the cloud? Is there anything else I should bear in mind in order to make a decision, like availability of plugins for hadoop that work better with one language or the other?

Thanks in advance