> I tested it was working by counting the bits and someone critizised it for not using popcount

PSA: Rust exposes the popcnt intrinsic via the `count_ones` method on integer types: https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/primitive.u32.html#method.coun...

Looks like that was added about 3 years after I wrote my test code.

According to the docs there, it was stabilized in 1.0, then stabilized in const contexts in 1.32. Were you testing this in 2012?