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Feels like cheating to say that about a function written in intrinsics though.

Yes, but some x64 compilers like Microsoft Visual C++ don't allow raw assembly in C++ (it did allow it for x86-32 though)

Not allowed for MSVC on arm and arm64 too.

To be fair, the assembly version seems to be missing about half the function, so it's not exactly a fair comparison.

Isn't that the goal of higher level language to start with ?

I think you read their comment backwards? I'd expect the higher level language to be terser in most scenarios.