In a strongly typed language one would normally want to reify the number in the type system whenever possible, i.e. the use of (a,b,c,d,e) rather than [a,b,c,d,e] in Haskell (that's a 5-tuple rather than a 5 element list).

I think that people used to dynamic programming languages would normally pick the list rather than the tuple simply because it at first appears easier. I think Dijkstra had something to say on that particular subject :)