At Ingage Partners, we believe that great software is built by great teams—and great teams never stop learning.
That belief drives everything we do, from how we work with clients to how we grow our own people. One of the ways we live that out is through C3: Code, Craft, Community—a monthly meetup we host that brings together developers from all levels and backgrounds to sharpen their skills, pair program, and explore the deeper questions behind great software development.
We don’t just talk about learning. We practice it, publicly and together.
May’s Meetup: Multiplication Flash Card Kata
At our May 21st session, we tackled a deceptively simple problem: a flash card app that quizzes users on multiplication. But the real lesson wasn’t in math—it was in how to make the code testable.
We used this kata to explore Test-Driven Development (TDD) and dependency substitution, focusing on how to work with (and around) unpredictable inputs like randomness, time, and user input. Participants learned how to use mocks and fakes to simulate these inputs and build better test coverage without introducing complexity.
The session started with a relatable TypeScript example that showed how even something like new Date().getHours() can make testing difficult—and how introducing an abstraction like a Clock interface can solve that problem cleanly. Then, pairs worked through the kata in the language of their choice, using templates provided in our GitHub repo.
By the end of the night, we had learned:
- The fundamentals of Test-Driven Development
- When and how to mock data for clarity and testability
- What it means to design for substitution
- How to extract interfaces from implementations
- The importance of identifying what you can’t control
Some people left with stronger testing skills. Others learned their first abstraction. Everyone left better than they arrived.
Why It Matters
This is more than a meetup. It’s a reflection of who we are.
At Ingage, we invest in growth—not just within our company, but in the broader Cincinnati tech community. We know that building better developers builds better teams, and better teams create better outcomes for our clients.
Come Code With Us
If you’re a developer in the Cincinnati area, we’d love to see you at our next C3 meetup. We meet monthly, on the third Wednesday of the month, at the Ingage Partners office (2943 Riverside Drive), and we welcome developers of all backgrounds and experience levels. Come to write code, pair up, ask questions, and eat some pizza.
Because when we share knowledge, everyone levels up.
