With consideration of existing functionality, developer productivity (assuming minimal experience in each language), support within the Fabric community, and roadmap for enhancements, is there any chaincode development language that should be preferred as the short-term and, perhaps separately, as the long-term choice?
Prior question Node.js or Go for Hyperledger Fabric's chaincode development? did not address Java as an option, and does not account for recent Fabric 1.4 platform release.
As of Hyperledger Fabric v1.4, there is base functional parity between Go, Node.js, and Java chaincode.
The previous answer in Node.js or Go for Hyperledger Fabric's chaincode development? is still fundamentally true. Base features typically get delivered in Go chaincode first. That being said, a new programming model has been introduced to Node.js chaincode in v1.4 that is explained in the new Developing Applications documentation. If the new programming model is of interest to you, Node.js chaincode would be a good choice.
At the end of the day, each of the languages have similar function, similar performance, as well as good support and community adoption.