Debugging with VS Code in Node.js - Hands-On Comparison

Debugging with VS Code

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple Node.js program that calculates the total price of items in a shopping cart. Sometimes the total is incorrect, so you want to learn how to debug your code using Visual Studio Code.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to set up a Node.js project and use VS Code's debugger to find and fix errors in your code step-by-step.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of items with prices

Add a variable to hold the total price

Use a loop to sum the prices

Add a breakpoint and debug the code in VS Code

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Debugging is a key skill for fixing errors in real software projects. Using VS Code's debugger helps you understand what your code is doing step-by-step.

💼 Career

Many software development jobs require debugging skills. Knowing how to use VS Code's debugger makes you more efficient and confident in finding and fixing bugs.

1

Create the items list

Create a constant array called items with these exact objects: { name: 'apple', price: 1.2 }, { name: 'banana', price: 0.8 }, and { name: 'orange', price: 1.5 }.

Node.js

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use const items = [ ... ] and include the exact objects inside the array.

2

Add a total variable

Add a variable called total and set it to 0 to hold the sum of prices.

Node.js

const items = [
  { name: 'apple', price: 1.2 },
  { name: 'banana', price: 0.8 },
  { name: 'orange', price: 1.5 }
];

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use let total = 0; to create the variable.

3

Sum the prices with a loop

Use a for loop with variable item to go through items and add item.price to total inside the loop.

Node.js

const items = [
  { name: 'apple', price: 1.2 },
  { name: 'banana', price: 0.8 },
  { name: 'orange', price: 1.5 }
];

let total = 0;

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use for (const item of items) { total += item.price; } to sum prices.

4

Add a breakpoint and debug

Add a debugger; statement inside the for loop after adding item.price to total. This will let you pause and inspect variables in VS Code's debugger.

Node.js

const items = [
  { name: 'apple', price: 1.2 },
  { name: 'banana', price: 0.8 },
  { name: 'orange', price: 1.5 }
];

let total = 0;

for (const item of items) {
  total += item.price;
  // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Insert debugger; inside the loop to pause execution in VS Code.