NPM stands for "Noob Playing Minecraft" because that's how it works basically. No it doesn't, 'tis a jest.
But in all seriousness, NPM is actually, allegedly short for "Node Package Manager", which is a software that helps JavaScript developers manage the libraries, frameworks, and their transitive dependencies down the dependency tree, they need for their projects. For Node.js it is the default package manager.
NPM is used to install and manage packages that are needed for your projects. All these packages are published to the NPM registry, which is a large database of packages that are available for use. When you start a new project, you can use NPM to install the packages that you need for your project from the NPM registry.
npm install package-name
In addition to merely installing packages, NPM also provides a number of useful command-line tools that can help you manage your projects. For example, you can use NPM to update packages, run scripts, and manage package dependencies from the command line itself.
So basically, NPM is an essential tool for developers working with JS frameworks and libraries, and is widely used in the JavaScript development community. It's like a personal assistant for your code, making sure all the right packages are in place so you can focus on building awesome things. It truly is an engineering marvel.