Back in 1981-1983 this was an actual method, one of the most popular methods, and it totally sucks (sorry). Back then people had a limited understanding of the cube. Solving corners first was only a thing for people who had 'advanced' knowledge of cube geometry. Most of the population would focus on 'getting one side.' For most, one side meant one side of stickers, not pieces. For more advanced solvers, they could solve one side correctly (i.e. the U-slice). Logic followed that if you could solve one side, the next thing you should do is solve a second side, which was usually R-slice. This was usually done by breaking off a top corner and putting back in a different way until two bottom corners were solved. Then intuitive use by rotating the cube and using U2 M/M' U2 M'/M to 3-cycle the missing 3 edges with other cube edges, and hope they were correctly oriented which was rare. Once in a rare while it would all line up and you would get the second slice solved. Now that you had 2 'sides' done, the next thing was to get '3 sides', i.e. the U-slice, the R-slice and the F-slice. This was now almost a lost cause because you can't do a single move on the cube without totally destroying what you have created. Nonetheless in if you lucked out and all the bottom corners were solved it was still possible with extreme luck and it did happen to me once and once only, before I switched to corners first/keyhole which was vastly better. Some less advanced cubers would solve 1 side of stickers and then get a second 'side' of stickers as well. The cube is nowhere near solved but to ignorant people it looks like you have made tons of progress, I once saw a cube that had 3-sides of 'stickers' solved and the person hadn't move the cube in weeks because they couldn't figure out how to progress without breaking what they had created.