Surprised there isn't more innovation and new tools like this around python's interactive shell given it's one of the real strong points the language has.
In [1]: int?
Init signature: int(self, /, *args, **kwargs)
Docstring:
int([x]) -> integer
int(x, base=10) -> integer
Convert a number or string to an integer, or return 0 if no arguments
are given. If x is a number, return x.__int__(). For floating point
numbers, this truncates towards zero.
[...]1. Write the program skeleton
2. Put an import pdb; pdb.set_trace() whereever I need to fill out next
3. Once I hit the breakpoint, type 'interact'
4. Start coding in the debugger.
4a. For small functions write in a scratch pad, test against another python console, then paste into the current debugger.
4b. For network calls, save the inputs and outputs. Toss a decorator on some functions to log the inputs and outputs to files, and cool we already have some proto test data.
4c. For documentation, call help() on the variable or method or module.