this is what i know...
When i started online, i just had a bit of research, discussion with friends and a load of learn by doing i was crushing. Then all this software stuff came along, and the games got a bit saturated with more pros, but fairly decent players misapplied basic theory to such an extent there whereas winrates did drop a little, because of extra action and still with decent edge was winning more. Then all the 19-yr old latvian and polish kids started to really figure it out, and in 12 months on ipoker I went from being open sat on 25/50euro tables with no-one sitting to getting bumhunted at 2/4.
Like pleno says, it's a layered thing, once you know one layer you add another and you get stronger and stronger, if you don't understand the bottom layers and try apply complicated theory on top of that then you will be throwing money at the wall. Problem is today, people are largely very good at it, and those that aren't get eaten up pretty quick, online anyway.
I would agree with this. There are a bunch of people using software really badly at the moment. Then again there are a lot of very smart young guys who have used software to improve at a exponential rate. Online and even live I don't think you can be a top player without having used software to learn and develop your game. There are exceptions to this but they are kind of rare.
Even live if you look at the high rollers they are dominated by German guys who are live a walking PIO solver. The only exception to this might be someone like Brynn Kenny but he is a outlier.
The bad ones tend to be the low and mid stake players who don't really understand what's going on, and misapply concepts, use bad ranges etc