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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.
August’s Meetup: Packet Inspector 9000
This month we put our brains to work on Packet Inspector 9000: a playful but surprisingly tricky coding kata.
The premise was simple: build a validator that checks if a packet ID passes the Digit Integrity Check (DIC) - meaning the ID must be evenly divisible by the sum of its digits. That’s easy enough to explain, but as we quickly learned, the fun comes from turning that tiny rule into clean, test-driven code that scales.
From there, the room took the challenge in different directions. Some pairs used the exercise as an opportunity to explore an entirely new programming language. Others leaned into different testing philosophies, with one group experimenting with data-driven tests while others kept things more exploratory. Even the tools sparked curiosity, as participants shared different keyboard layouts, IDEs, operating systems, and programming languages - giving their partners a chance to see setups they might not normally be exposed to.
Most groups focused squarely on the packet ID itself, since that was the heart of the kata, though a few considered whether defining a richer packet data structure might bring clarity. Once the basics were working, many teams chased after stretch goals. The most popular? Performance. Groups pushed their solutions to scan larger ranges of packet IDs quickly and efficiently, and shared creative ways to make their code scale.
Along the way, we also reflected on how to keep growing with katas beyond the first pass. One powerful practice is to revisit a familiar kata with a self-imposed constraint - like tackling it in a new language, or forbidding if/switch statements to force alternative logic flows. These kinds of twists can turn even the most comfortable problem into a fresh learning experience.
If you’d like to take a crack at Packet Inspector 9000 yourself - or just see what one of our meetups looks like - we’ve made the full challenge available here: https://github.com/Ingage-Meetup/20250820-Packet-Inspector-9000
In the end, the takeaway wasn’t just a working Packet Inspector, but a reminder of why we do C3 in the first place: small problems can lead to big insights when tackled together. It’s not about who “finished,” but about sharpening skills, swapping perspectives, and building community through code.
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, experience levels, and technologies & programming languages. Come to write code, pair up, ask questions, and eat some pizza.
Because when we share knowledge, everyone levels up.
