Why doesn't Console.WriteLine work in Visual Studio Code?

In launch.json there should be a field called 'console':

Changing it from:

  "console": "internalConsole",

To:

  "console": "externalTerminal",

fixed it for me.

If you are just trying to run a cs file without a project etc then the problem is that code runner is treating the file as a script. As such the main method is actually not being invoked as it would be if running a console app.

The solution therefore is to make your main method public and add a call to Program.Main(null); after the class definition. This solution does not require any launch.json config file or config changes. Note the call to Program.Main after the class definition does show as an error in VS code but it runs fine in code runner. See the code block below.

using System;
class Program
{
    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Test");
    }
}

Program.Main(null);

I found the answer to this here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/46179597