Swift enum property *without* initializing the enum case with an associated value?

[pkamb]

I found another reference to this ability:

Request: Ability to refer to an enum case in abstract (without its associated value)

I'm not sure if this is what you're driving at, but I've found a use-case for the ability to refer to an enum case generically without reference to any of its associated values. Let me give you an example: In our app, we have an enum that represents all the different screens to which the user can navigate. (A screen in our case usually means a view controller or hierarchy thereof.) Because each screen might require specific view model object(s) to render their content, some of our enum cases …

Basically:

Bear with my inaccurate analogy here, because it might provide a better explanation of what I'm talking about:

In an enum, when a case has no associated values, you can think of values of that case behaving like a type in that there's only one version of it that can exist: the thing itself. There's no range of values that can be represented by such an enum case; there's just one value.

Now, once you introduce associated values, the concept of an enum case suddenly changes: it no longer represents a single thing, it represents a potential range of things. In other words, realized versions of those case values stop acting like types and start acting like instances of a type.

Anywhere else in Swift where something acts like a value, there's an equivalent metavalue type that can also be represented in a Swift variable.

It seems to me it's quite common in software development that when you model specific instances of things, you also need a way to represent the general form of those specific things.