JavaScript variable assignments from tuples

You have to do it the ugly way. If you really want something like this, you can check out CoffeeScript, which has that and a whole lot of other features that make it look more like python (sorry for making it sound like an advertisement, but I really like it.)

Javascript 1.7 added destructuring assignment which allows you to do essentially what you are after.

function getTuple(){
   return ["Bob", 24];
}
var [a, b] = getTuple();
// a === "bob" , b === 24 are both true