• VSCode Version: 1.12.2
• OS Version: Windows 10
• From my answer on StackOverflow question which turns up high in Bing results searching for error message.

The VSCode message "Cannot launch program ... setting the 'outDir' attribute might help" can be very misleading, even as recently as VSCode v1.12.2. It was caused by a minor error in my launch.json file. I had:

        "type": "node",
        "request": "launch",
        "name": "Gulp",
        "program": "${workspaceRoot}/node_modules/gulp/bin",
        "sourceMaps": true,
        "outFiles": [
            "${workspaceRoot}/{lib,node_modules}/**/*.js",
            "!${workspaceRoot}/lib/tests/**/*.js"
        ]

And fixed the problem by changing one line:

        "program": "${workspaceRoot}/node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp",

Despite what the message says, the outFiles property may not be necessary. Once I fixed the other problem, debugging seems to work fine without it.

The original problem is long forgotten. I'll mark it closed.