As an every-day R user but only-occasional python user, everytime I do a python project I spend some time looking for a comparable IDE. Closest i found was Spyder, but random lock ups made it unusable. Back to terminal+ipython and sublime. Sublime REPL + ipython doesn't cut it either.

What do you love about pandas, is it performance, syntax, access to other python modules? If performance, take a look at R's data.table package: almost any manipulation can be done by reference.