> I feel that supercomputers are good at one thing: if you need to make your country's flagship submarine about 10% faster/quieter than the competition.

Or doing Numerical Weather Prediction. :-)

But seriously, as a cluster sysadmin, the “128 jobs, followed by post-processing” is great for me, because it lets those separate jobs be scheduled as soon as resources are available.

> expensive resources with little support

Unfortunately, there isn’t as much funding available in places for user training and consultation. Good writing & education is a skill, and folks aren’t always interested in a job that has is term-limited, or whose future is otherwise unclear.