The more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm thinking of people who back in the 90s/early noughties didn't want to bother with a middle tier application, and instead talk directly to the database from their fat clients(1) because it was easier.
(1) This, btw, is what many SPA are: fat client apps running within a browser. When I came back to web development four years ago one of the biggest surprises was how much like desktop development it had become in many ways.
Without a public facing DB they're pretty much dead in the water.