Devoloping socket applications with IDLE

[the bean machine]

Hello,
	Anyone have any suggestions on how to develop socket apps when using the 
IDLE? I find an annoying problem when I am working on socket apps that I 
can't break out of them. Well it is more complicated, I have multipled 
threads running, and I can't figure out how to trap a signal (ctrl-c) 
and exit both threads. I also get a problem that if I try to communicate 
between two sockets and something goes wrong in the flow, the socket 
will hang blocking waiting for input. It is kind of annoying problem and 
I have to hangup the IDLE environment and restart it complete (kill id).

Are there better ways to make socket programs that are responsive and 
you can break from the keyboard?