Commerce 2: Is it 'really' necessary to setup product attributes before adding a simple product? Following along with the documentation at http://docs.drupalcommerce.org/v2/product/index.html#

Slightly puzzled by the following 


  "Setup product attributes - Before creating products, you need to
  create some attributes... "


Is it really necessary to setup some product attributes? What about a simple product for which a the body field is all that is needed to describe the item?

Be interested to know whether there may be some other reason for why product attributes should be created or whether the documentation ought to be clarified?
If the products you are adding do not require different variations, there is no need to add attributes. Product attributes are meant to define unique properties of a variation of the same product. 

An example would be a t-shirt where the color and the size are two different attributes. The shirt has the same print and model (eg. long sleeves), but any given combination of size and color can exist, each having a different price, photo, etc. and its own SKU.

The documentation lists the creation of attributes before the creation of products, so you can choose these attributes once you start adding products.