It can be used realtime, but it can also be used to render stuff and make videos too 
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It is basically a software allowing you to create applications, realtime visuals, audio or sensor reactive content, art installations, and many more things!
The main idea is programming using nodes instead of writing code, but it can also take code, for example, to make tools, speed up workflows, or even developing shaders.
It is based on another node based software called Houdini, used mainly for VFX on films, commercials, and television 
It is super intuitive and highly recommend for developing visual content for live gigs and so.
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@jemmons wish I’d gotten hear earlier
@Inakito is basically right…
way back in the 20th century there was a company called SideFX that made a program called ‘Houdini’ - it’s a 3D VFX/Animation application (if you’ve seen a movie with any visual effects in it in the last 20 years then you’ve seen what someone can do with Houdini - like Maya/3D Studio Max/blender/Cinema4D etc
its a fully procedural node based system - like Pd - you have data, that data gets sent into a node, the node ‘does something’ to the data and them passes it along to the next node etc
the benefit of doing this is that, if you do it right, these networks can be procedural and non-destructive - meaning you can re-use them all over the place and that they can adapt to changes…
So anyway - one of the two owners of SideFX, Greg Hermanovich (the other being Kim Davidson - my boss ) was more interested in live music and performance etc and so he stuck out on his own and created a company called Derivative, bringing with him a big chunk of the Houdini code.
So now it’s many years later and TouchDesigner is out there doing some crazy things - much of it live - much of it projected onto building and other odd things.
if you’re interested in creating visuals like this:
then check it out!
hope that helps
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SideFX is still kicking, so Houdini, it is just a pleasure to work with, and still has many years to bring us happiness and keep amazing development
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I did a course on it a couple of years ago. It’s mostly for visual manipulation, but it can connect to MIDI and also take audio inputs from a variety of sources, so you can do audio reactive stuff pretty easily.
I made this generative / interactive thing with it as my final project for the course:
It takes MIDI input from a TR-06 (notes, CCs) and uses it to manipulate the “player” on screen. There’s also some code involved that detects when that object intersects with the other objects, sending MIDI CCs back to the TR-06 to adjust various parameters of the sound (distortion amount, decay length etc).
It’s very flexible software, and also supports Python (and maybe some other languages? not sure), I used some Python in the above to report positions of objects and do basic collision detection.
As for how it relates to M8, I thiink it was just the thing Trash80 found most convenient to use to display the screen data. The M8 display patch uses serial data to show the screen content.
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You can also build synths with it. I was a bit overwhelmed the first times I tried to get into it because I started with way to complex tutorials. Then I found Bileam Tschepe. Really fun and often simple to go along and when you understand more you can start to experiment and cross different systems.
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OK, so Unity vs TouchDesigner… which would you invest time in to learn and why?
That’s a tough question, since Unity is aimed at game development and TD is for…well, for anything actually.
Also Unity is way better for VR/AR than TD or even Unreal Engine, but also shamefully expensive when it comes to licensing and distribution…
Back to TD: It is my main software for anything, I use it as my “main hub” in all my artistic projects. You can think of it like a logic center or brain for parametrical interfacing and interaction in realtime. For me it is what comes closest to synesthesia in terms of what it can do: I can translate color information from a video into sounds, or sound into data to control Arduinos, or sensors to drive an AI via API, etc. etc.
It can also be used like Max/MSP for sound synthesis or multichannel setups, or purely as a generative video synth with a simplyfied shader pipeline based on nodes…the sky is the limit.
Also it is nothing new really in terms of what it does: Before TD there was e.g. Quartz Composer, and besides TD there is also vvvv or Processing, but TD is, for me personally, way more accessible, better documented and very tightly integrated with several industry standards / protocols
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Honestly I think most people will struggle to get Processing to make something as slick as TD, unless they are a beast at shader programming.
(I love Processing, it’s my go to tool for the last decade to create, but I do feel the need to unlock shaders and 3D and I wonder if that means jumping to a node-based workflow)
I think the one advantage Unity has over lots of other options, is the ability to compile to an app for a smartphone or tablet.
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That is my only issue with TD and ever since I am interested in learning cables.gl
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not yet, but I barely feel confident in Python and have anxiety when it comes to GLSL, so learning another system with a new language is tough for me atm 
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Depending on your needs.
What do you need to do?
Probably you may also need include Unreal for comparison
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And how about VVVV
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that would be my only contender, ubfortunately not as “popular” as TD when it comes to tutorials etc., but well documented and great for executables
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Agreed
Ideally software that can publish native apps, do AR, and create intense visuals with lots of real-time data inputs, handle vectors as well as image/video, all through a node-based interface with real-time control.
Am I asking too much?! 
Its what quartz composer wanted to be when it grew up
Nice beginner friendly videos :
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Great Videos, nothing I will ever use but I can see why people like it.