I really liked the VS IDE when I was a windows programmer, I'm still struggling to find something comparable.
My fears are still that python code on windows is still a nightmare, especially when you throw something like OpenCV into the mix.
My fears are still that python code on windows is still a nightmare, especially when you throw something like OpenCV into the mix.
Your fears regarding Python on Windows were quite justified. However, the world has dramatically changed, thanks in large part to folks like Continuum.io and their Anaconda distribution, Christoph Golke, and many other wheel providers.
Visual Studio actually provides an option to download Anaconda for you. It has a few hundred pre-built Windows pkgs ready to go. We also use it on our free jupyter notebook service and have been very happy with it.
UCI repo: http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/
Anaconda: https://www.continuum.io/downloads
Azure Notebooks: https://notebooks.azure.com
If you have been away from Windows for a bit, I think now is a good time to at least take a cursory look around again ;)