It's a talker implemented in javascript, designed to run on Node.js.
A talker is a text based chat program, typically accessed with telnet. They usually try to provide a sort of virtual world in which people can talk, do things and move around. Think text based Second Life. They were most popular in the 1990s and had pretty much died out by 2000.
It's very minimal. There are no rooms, few commands and no facility to register user names. There is enough to chat.
More importantly, it's designed to be easily extensible.
The core of a talker is an echo server. This is about the simplest network program you can write so it's a good way to learn a new platform like Node.js.
Actually though, the real reason is nostalgia.
- Install Node.js
- node talker.js
- telnet localhost 5555
Have fun!