I would never tell someone what editor to use in the same way I wouldn't tell someone what religion to believe in. Which is to say, I would tell my kids or other trusting soul... I used emacs for years, I was eventually convinced to start using nedit, which is quite nice. For an IDE, which I need for GUI debugging more than all the other sometimes-nice bells and whistles, I use WingIDE and have found it pretty cool but not free. In terms of using it, it's much like any IDE these days and I think learning one is a good platform for learning how IDEs tend to work in general, at least until something genuinely different comes along in that space.
I would say a beginner willing to face a learning curve should make sure they know how to edit their project outside of the IDE, understand something about how the IDE makes their project, and so on. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
