first time user assistance

Hi,

I'm a Sysadmin in a windows environment who smashed his head for the zillioned time against MS idiocy.
So on an impulse I installed my first ever linux system since I've always been jealous of the open source way of things.
I have experience in c++/c#, batch/powershell and HTML5/CSS.
Now my question.
I want to have a programming environment for this system and after trolling the internet I decided on giving python a try for the interface and use c++ for the rest. Can any of you suggest a good editor and manual for python, because the ones I choose from the software centre keep telling me that they are not in my software sources.

Thanks in advanced