why do you initialize an npm code example

Example: what is npm init

The npm init command is a step-by-step tool to scaffold out your project. 
It will prompt you for input for a few aspects of the project 
in the following order:

The project's name,
The project's initial version,
The project's description,
The project's entry point (meaning the project's main file),
The project's test command (to trigger testing with something like Standard)
The project's git repository (where the project source can be found)
The project's keywords (basically, tags related to the project)
The project's license (this defaults to ISC - most open-source Node.js projects are MIT)