Lazycoder

Fire and Motion quote

Joel on Software – Fire And Motion

Joel’s article about Fire and Motion (also called Fire and Maneuver, makes a good point but it reminds me of a quote I read in a D-Day book by Stephen Ambrose.

The Rangers were given the most difficult, and ultimately the most useless, task of the D-Day invasion. Scale a sheer cliff wall defended by Germans and take out artillery that was pointed at the beach. As the Rangers made their way up the cliff, the Germans firing at basically point blank range down on them, one of the soldiers was asked if they were performing their fire and maneuver tactics like they were taught during basic training. The solider replied, “Yes sir, they’re firing and we’re maneuvering!”

The moral of the story is, the fire and maneuver tactic works best if you get to fire first. Otherwise you just spend a lot of time ducking.