The Taccdoop package has been created to allow new users to very easily test out their hadoop installation. To start, you can download the standalone jar and try running word count. Assuming that you have done everything else, should be able to do the following to count the words of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:
$ wget http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1661/pg1661.txt
$ hadoop fs -put pg1661.txt holmes.txt
This obtains the text and puts it onto HDFS. Next, get the Taccdoop assembly (standalone) jar:
$ wget https://bitbucket.org/jasonbaldridge/taccdoop/downloads/Taccdoop-assembly-0.1.jar
Finally, run it:
$ hadoop jar Taccdoop-assembly-0.1.jar tacc.hadoop.example.WordCount holmes.txt wc_out_holmes
Next, create your own jar without needing Eclipse -- just a command line and Java will do the trick. Use Mercurial to check out the source code of Taccdoop or download the latest:
Then follow the instructions in the README. You should be able to start a new project by modifying the Taccdoop setup as described in the README.
Note: if you are interested in Scala with Hadoop, there is an example word count in Scala as well -- see tacc.hadoop.scala.WordCount.