Ask HN: Writing stable, maintainable, production-ready code in Python

For the last five years i have been working as a Java developer, mostly doing backend stuff, APIs and automation.

I now started doing some private projects with Python and i love the language and overall philosophy. However, i find it rather hard to write good, maintainable and stable code the way i do in Java. In Java there is type checking, Exceptions are enforced and Eclipse will nag about everything that looks like a hack. In Python, i feel like my stuff can fall apart at any moment.

So, what tools and best practices are you using with Python?