Mokka mit Schlag

I’ve been working on a mixed language Python-Java project lately. Increasingly I find myself needing to trace into the Python code, and I miss the features of Eclipse when doing so. (Yes, I’ve installed PyDev. No, it isn’t very good.) Are there any IDEs out there that let me do more than syntax color the Python? Since my primary interest is in exploring other people’s code, what I’m really looking for are the browsing features of Eclipse’s Java support. In particular I’d like to be able to click a method name or variable and find out where that is declared. I’d also like to be able to click a definition of a function or class and get a list of references to that item in the project.

This functionality is easily available in Java, and it’s very helpful. Can anything out there in Python-land do this, or is this a place where a dynamically typed language isn’t so helpful? (How would you even know at compile-time which class will be bound to a variable?) I do notice that the Python folks I’m working with eschew IDEs in favor of emacs themselves. Is this the S.O.P for Pythonistas? or for that matter for all dynamically typed languages?

Three Sanderlings and a Semipalmated Sandpiper were acting like Purple Sandpipers, feeding on the rock jetties at Riis Park this past Saturday. They were surprisingly unskittish around people, as witnessed by these closeups.
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Variegated Fritillary, Variegated Fritillary
Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, 2007-08-12

Jacob Riis Park, 2007-08-11
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In Chicago last month I happened to catch Men in Trees on TV. It was mildly amusing, but I liked it better the first time I saw it. You know, when it was called Northern Exposure.

Gray Catbird, Dumetella carolinensis
Jackson Park, Chicago, 2007-07-28