I had "vaccumed" all indices referencing those entities before issuing a delete. Albeit, there was only once index per purged entity type. So this would not explain the 20x write operations.
Also, note that the deletions were through the "Datasore Admin" app, which was recently added. It is different from the classic Datastore Viewer.
I have been using GAE Python since it came out. Used it to build www.thesponty.com and www.gamedaytycoon.com (social game on FB). The latter has thousands of users and GAE scales super well. We deploy > 10 times a day. GAE is really awesome.
This is awesome! I shared it on Facebook, but your mugshot showed up in the preview rather than say a ShelfLuv logo. The latter would probably be more enticing for my friends to check out!
I've been using Remember The Milk as a GTD tool and I highly recommend it! Rather than moving your your tasks between notebooks, you move them between lists. The Gears/Chrome client is much faster than the Evernote desktop client, and there is even a Launchy plugin that allows you to insert tasks into RTM quickly straight from Launchy. There are also keyboard shortcuts, which make it even easier. Totally worth the $25 a year to get the iPhone app.
I always thought GTD was neat, but never had the gumption to create a physical filing system. RTM changes that by making GTD much more convenient.
I would suggest Python. It is easy to learn and can be used in many different projects including web apps.
You can then use your new skill and build web apps on Google App Engine. It's great because you won't have to worry about the non-so-fun bits, like configuring servers.
Our original idea was exactly what you describe: organize casual events with friends. But that didn't gain traction.
What we've empirically verified, is that this is not a big enough pain point to get people to ditch the default position. The default position being:
1. SMS
or
2. Facebook status updates. Not even structured events, even though Facebook just made creating the latter much easier.
So we pivoted. The new incarnation was:
Discover events through taste makers.
This -we thought- allowed us to short circuit the "I don't have enough friends on the service" argument. So now you can follow people who share your cultural interests and discover events through them so that you can drag your friends along.
This newest incarnation is too hard to distribute. By distribution I mean: user acquisition. We had/have an awesome website, a native iPhone app, cool graphics and even a gaming element.
You need to convince enough people to post events, and then convince others to follow them and like/attend those events.
So my 2.0 cents:
1. Think about distribution: How are you going to get users?
2. Is this a big enough pain point to convince people to ditch the default? (I don't believe so, and I brought a similar product to market).
EDIT: Sponty is still running and we do have users. But we've moved on and are now working on social games.
I would suggest starting with Google App Engine (the Python version). For the following reasons:
1. Python is a good language to learn. You can use it for other things beside building a web app. GAE is similar to Django.
2. The GAE datastore is easier to fathom than a traditional database. For some reason, I always found databases hard to understand, and it seems that designing schemas for non trivial projects is a separate and distinct skill set from software engineering.
3. GAE solves the updating/patching of working code by providing a sane environment and tools to update and version your app. You can easily switch back to a previous version. Patching datastore schemas is slightly harder.
4. You get scalability out of the box. You don't have to worry about hardware, or even configuring "virtual" instances. None of that. But you probably won't have to worry about scalability for a while.
5. You can easily deploy code to multiple environments. You just need to signup for more apps, and update your app.yaml file to point to a new app name. You can do this in a simple build script.
Some feedback:
1. It is not clear to me what happens after updating the keyword list. Would the program then go find people and follow them based on those keywords?
2. "People you have followed (controlpanel.php?p=following)" is empty. Shouldn't this fill up instantaneously?
Also, note that the deletions were through the "Datasore Admin" app, which was recently added. It is different from the classic Datastore Viewer.