Without a moments thought, yes, many skilled programmers would be fooled by that. But in the same vein from all the "unskilled" programmers out there there should be some who get a "stroke of insight" after looking at that error message. And often that is also the moment they learn that error messages are a source of information not to be clicked away

At the least the message pinpoints the problem area. As soon as someone knows how to debug, he's got a lead now.