Take Reddit and Hacker News as a fitting analogy, a community with a higher barrier to entry/more niche will be smaller, but the quality is vastly improved. There's still going to be people who sit in both communities, and smart people in both, but it's not controversial to say that an initial learning curve tends to attract people who can pass the learning curve and are motivated to do so. Another great example is the linux kernel development process.
> Currently there are some combinations that simply best-in-class: VSCode+TS, JetBrainsIDEA+Java/Kotlin, VisualStudio+MicrosoftGuiStuff. vim/emacs may come a long way in these areas, but cannot beat the integration level offered in these combinations.
Integration in some ways, in other ways a terminal based tool that adheres to the unix philosophy is more integrated with thousands of tools than an IDE where every tool has to be converted into a bespoke series of menu items. Just look at fzf, git, rg, etc. integrations in Vim. They are only lightly wrapped and so the full power of the tool shines through, and it's easy to customize it to your specific needs, or add more tools.
> Finally: AI will come to software devt, and I wonder if AI tools will ever be available on true open access innovated IDEs.
In the same vein, AI tools that act as black boxes and are integrated in the same transparent way as git or rg in Vim at least allow the editor to remain full transparent to the end user, and leave the complexity in the LSP or bespoke tool. I really see no difference between how AI tools will relate to editing as LSPs do today.