Comment by skeledrew

Not really. If you try to take something from an empty container (language or real life) then you should get an error/issue. The container type doesn't change when it's empty, and the operation is just senseless; all that's happening here is added mental gymnastics that makes code unintuitive to read. Checking if/asserting a container isn't empty is a straight forward `if cont: ...` or `assert cont` in Python, which anyone can just get.