What happens to comments when building a solution or project?

Hi All,

I was just wondering what happens to comments and debug statements when a project is compiled. I notice that during a "release" build, debug statements i.e debug.writeline, are not executed.

Does this mean that they are not compiled with the app??

If they are, how can the app be compiled without the comments in the release build, but retained for the dev environment.

Please could someone explain without posting millions of links here.