Recently I discovered this absolute gem of an IDE called PyCharm. One of my flatmates and I were talking about web development and he recommended WebStorm made by the same CamelCase-loving company.
Python was my route into programming and I began writing programs using the Vim text editor, mostly because I didn't know any better. When I finally discovered IDEs I was using Eclipse to learn Java and I installed the PyDev plugin so I could use it for programming in Python too.
Now, Eclipse is great -- it really is! -- and at the time I loved how it helped me with refactoring and code-completion. But after only a few minutes with PyCharm I realised that there was so much more an IDE could do for me.
PyCharm can tell you when your code breaks PEP recommendations and help you with style. It can make sensible suggestions concerning which methods can be called from which objects (unlike PyDev which seems quite hit-and-miss) and it can even make inferences about a variable's type based on the docstring of the function that created it!
Maybe I love these ideas because they help me, at a basic level, in the same way that any good IDE would help me with Java or any other strongly typed language -- it gives me sensible code-completion suggestions and spots errors way sooner. But, I don't have to deal with the extra weight of assigning types to absolutely everything and I get things done much quicker.
If you program in Python, or one of the other languages for which JetBrain produces IDEs, I thoroughly recommend trying it out. Eclipse -- it's over and I'm taking the kids.
