Breakpoints and the Run and Debug View

VS Code's debugger works the same conceptual way as any real debugger — pause execution, inspect state, step forward — with its own specific panels worth knowing well.

Click in the left margin next to a line to set a breakpoint — a red dot appears. Press F5 (Start Debugging) and execution pauses the moment it reaches that line, exactly the same mechanic as the Visual Studio Mastery track's Debugging Basics course.

The Run and Debug view (Activity Bar, the play-button-with-bug icon) is the dedicated home for debugging — Variables, Watch, Call Stack, and Breakpoints panels all live here, visible together while a debug session is active.

F5 needs a configuration the first time — VS Code will offer to create one automatically for most common project types. This generates a launch.json file (covered next lesson) describing how to actually start and attach the debugger to your specific project.

Step Over (F10), Step Into (F11), and Step Out (Shift+F11) work identically to every other debugger in this platform's tracks — execute the current line and stop at the next one, dive into a called function, or finish the current function and return to its caller.

The Debug Console (bottom panel, switches automatically during a session) lets you evaluate expressions live, using your actual paused program's state — genuinely useful for testing "what would this expression return right now" without editing code and restarting.

Why this matters for you

The mechanics are the same debugging discipline as everywhere else in this platform — pause, inspect, step — VS Code's version of it lives in the Run and Debug view specifically, worth knowing as your home base for all of it.

▶️ Before the next lesson

Open a real project with runnable code, set one breakpoint on a line that executes when you run it, and press F5 — confirm you see the pause and the Run and Debug view populate.