One example was that tuples elegantly handle multiple return values anyways, so you don't need to bother with them if you have tuples (and tuples are good in their own right).

Another is that generics already exist in the language - map works even for user defined types. But since you can't make your own generics, map is all you get. With generics map is just a standard library feature rather than a core language feature, and you could write your own containers too if you wanted.

These might not make the language spec strictly shorter, but definitely more orthogonal.