You have to be careful with the "Explanation(Understanding) vs. Prediction" dichotomy. They are related but Explanations should always have precedence since they are fundamental to creating a Theory in the first place that then can make Predictions.

David Deutsch actually argues for Understanding/Explanations over Predictions.

Here is a nice Reddit thread on this; David Deutsch argues that explanation, not prediction, is the primary goal of science. How widely accepted is this view? - https://old.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyofScience/comments/1trw2n...

David Deutsch: A New Way To Explain Explanation - (TED talk) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=folTvNDL08A and (Transcript of the previous) https://medium.com/dorothyknows/david-deutsch-a-new-way-to-e...

Here he points out that "good explanations" should be "hard-to-vary". What does he mean by this?

It means that "a good explanation" cannot be arbitrarily modified without unraveling its internal coherent structure or contradicting the very facts that it seeks to explain. The evidence and the internal logic that holds up the explanation are tightly coupled together as one organic whole thing.