Right now I'm developing mostly in C/C++, but I wrote some small utilities in Python to automatize some tasks and I really love it as language (especially the productivity). 
Except for the performances (a problem that could be sometimes solved thanks to the ease of interfacing Python with C modules), do you think it is proper for production use in the development of stand-alone complex applications (think for example to a word processor or a graphic tool)?
What IDE would you suggest? The IDLE provided with Python is not enough even for small projects in my opinion.
I had only one python experience, my trash-cli project.
I know that probably some or all problems depends of my inexperience with python.
I found frustrating these things: 

the difficult of finding a good IDE for free
the limited support to automatic refactoring

Moreover:

the need of introduce two level of grouping packages and modules confuses me.
it seems to me that there is not a widely adopted code naming convention
it seems to me that there are some standard library APIs docs that are incomplete
the fact that some standard libraries are not fully object oriented annoys me

Although some python coders tell me that they does not have these problems, or they say these are not problems.
Is Python good for big software projects (not web based)?