The message is telling exactly what's wrong.

Sure it is. But the point is how you'd interpret the message if you think that '~' stands for your home directory. Of course, once you reckon what the problem is, it's all nice and dandy.

Honestly, if some message reports a problem with ~/somefile, would your first thought be that the real problem is that ~ has nothing to do with your home directory? Even details such as "Permission denied" vs. "No such file or directory" etc., or whether the shell would normally expand tilde in an error message, might not immediately point in the right direction. — Believe me, I've seen rather skilled programmers tricked by this...