slow progress with IDE's ...

[Chris Q]

hello list.

i'm newish to python - i have written a program involving win32com and 
wxPython, and making progress... but not as much as i had expected!

for starters i have yet to find an adequate means of discovering class 
methods (and onwards through inheritance) through either the IDLE or 
pythonwin ide's. given the degree of introspection possible, and with 
docstrings too, is there no tool yet to point-and-click through a 
piece of source code to discern what methods are available, their 'def 
xyz(...)' beginnings, and their description?
are my expectations running ahead of reality?

my next difficulty stems from, admittedly my own poor code, the 
regular occurrence of windows C++ library failure messages which wipes 
out completely my IDE (idle and pythonwin) - if i was not so keen to 
run my code immediately, then i should be forced to run the debugger 
every change i made to be certain not to lose a dozen open editing 
windows!  is it me or the IDE at fault here?

another thing is breaking into looping code - how the hell is it done?
if i run BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer.serve_forever() under IDLE, for 
instance, i can close the interactive window but re-running the module 
causes a complete hang, which only the windows task manager can deal 
with, again with the loss of the entire IDE.
with pythonwin even the interactive window is not amenable to closing
and Control-C does not work.
GUI code gives the same trouble.

i do not seem to have reached the 'comfort zone' of developing with 
python.
any recommendations welcome on best development setup/efficient 
development habits on windows w2k platform, issues not covered by the 
python tutorials i have seen.

thanks
chris