How can I develop django/python facebook applications more efficiently?

I’m new to facebook development. Is there any way to get error messages? Sometimes my app’s canvas page returns http 500 errors, but my server logs say nothing informative. Firebug takes dozens of minutes processing the advertisement GETs. How can I get information? Should I dev using space other than the canvas? Should I use someother facebook tool? When I mess up python in the views, how can I debug that?