It's useful for browsing data.
ncdump has lots of options:
ncdump [-h|-c] [-v ...] [-k] [-t|-i] [-b lang] [-f lang]
[-s] [-l len] [-n name] [-p fdig[,ddig]] [-x] file.nc
[-h|-c] header only, or coordinates and header only
[-v var1[,...]] data for variable(s) var1,... only
[-k] output kind of netCDF file, instead of CDL
[-t|-i] output time data as date-time or ISO date-time strings
...
file.nc Name of netCDF file