Why do they feel like this?
This is probably influenced by Java, where the usual pattern is to define class properties as private and to write boilerplate getters and setters to access them.
Even in Python (as “OOP” language) it is considered to be perfectly fine to have class properties as public API. You can use property methods to change internal behavior without changing the API if required (you can do the same in Julia by adding new getproperty / setproperty! methods).