I hate .cso shader files

When you compile a high level programming language, it gets converted into an executable containing, for the most part, assembly code.

I like to say that most of an XNA project's assets can be recovered from the final deployed package. They come in XNB containers so you only need to uncompress them.

This is not true for .cso (Compiled Shader Object) files, which are often used as camera/texture effects in XNA.

When working on a project in XNA Game Studio, HLSL shaders are compiled into binary .cso files for usage with your code. They cannot be converted back into HLSL files, much like how most executables also cannot be converted back into source code.

The pain is real.