Why is Scala's syntax for tuples so unusual?

Question

In mathematics and computer science, a tuple is an ordered list of elements. In set theory, an (ordered) n-tuple is a sequence (or ordered list) of n elem

Answer 1

You can easily achive that with shapeless:

import shapeless.syntax.std.tuple._

val t = ("a", 2, true, 0.0)

val s = t(0) // String at compile time
val i = t(1) // Int at compile time
// etc

A lot of methods available for standard collection are also available for tuples this way (head, tail, init, last, ++ and ::: for concatenation, +: and :+ for adding elements, take, drop, reverse, zip, unzip, length, toList, toArray, to[Collection], ...)