'Intellisense' possible for Python?

[Greg Brunet]

"Cameron Laird" <claird at lairds.com> wrote in message
news:v01uhsnhke025d at corp.supernews.com...
> Let me offer what I regard as a more affirmative way to
> express this:  "Intellisense" is more valuable for VB
> *because* VB embodies so much redundancy.  Yes, certain
> solecisms manifest earlier in VB than they do in Python,
> and, all things being equal, that would be an advantage
> for VB.

.. err - could you put that in English for me - remember, I'm just a
simple VB programmer. <g>

> All things better not be equal, though; good
> style in Python emphasizes concision and abundant unit
> testing.  If you're working in Python, and think, "ah,
> if only Intellisense were here to autocomplete some
> stuff", that's a clue that there's probably a more
> elegant and Pythonic way to express your solution, one
> that builds in what Intellisense only guesses.

I wouldn't argue against being concise or extensive unit testing, but I
don't see where those really relate to a feature like Intellisense.
What I'm looking for are ways that the IDE can help me out - simple
stuff, like:
- When I can't remember the exact names of all of the methods or
properties of a class, it's nice if they pop up when I type "object." so
I can scan through them to find the one I'm looking for.
- I haven't memorized all the parameters to a method, or their order, so
I'd like to see the method 'declaration/interface/etc.' so I know what
goes where.  Additionally, since it knows the types of the arguments,
when I'm trying to do something like fill in the MsgBoxStyle argument
for the type of messagebox I want to use, it can display the list of
enumerations of MsgBoxStyle.  Now I can always enter a variable name
there instead, but if I want a specific setting, I don't have to go
search for it.

While I'm likely not thinking very Pythonic-ly yet, I don't see this as
something that goes against that.  Rather, it's simply an aid to
learning and documenting the functions, classes, etc. and making it
easier to look them up than to jump over to separate documentation files
(which also have the disadvantage of getting out of sync with the actual
code!).

--
Greg