Pangool is not an alternative for Cascading. For example, at this point, Pangool does not help you managing workflows. If you are starting a MapReduce application, it is probably the best option to start using higher level abstractions: Cascading, Hive, Pig, etc.
But if you are thinking about learning Hadoop using the standard Hadoop API, or if you need for some particular reason to use it for your project, we recommend you to use Pangool instead.
Or if you are considering to implement another abstraction on top of Hadoop, probably using Pangool for it would also be a good idea.
In fact, what we believe is that the default Hadoop API should look like Pangool.
But if you are thinking about learning Hadoop using the standard Hadoop API, or if you need for some particular reason to use it for your project, we recommend you to use Pangool instead.
Or if you are considering to implement another abstraction on top of Hadoop, probably using Pangool for it would also be a good idea.
In fact, what we believe is that the default Hadoop API should look like Pangool.