Years ago, John Robbins examined the details of PDB files in PDB Files: What Every Developer Must Know. Since then, a lot has changed about .NET. Despite that, most developers still lack an understanding of how PDBs work or why they are so important. Most times, I see teams trying to prevent PDBs from being created in release code; this is a sure path to future problems. In this post, I’ll provide updated details on the nature of PDBs and how they work.