And already on page 2 Thurston cuts the the root of the issue, 30 years ago:

>On a more everyday level, it is common for people first starting to grapple with computers to make large-scale computations of things they might have done on a smaller scale by hand. They might print out a table of the first 10,000 primes, only to find that their printout isn’t something they really wanted after all. They discover by this kind of experience that what they really want is usually not some collection of “answers”—what they want is understanding.

The difference in reactions by the maths community should probably be spit up into those who have read and understood On Proof and Progress and actually thought deeply about why they do mathematics, and those who haven't.