Great that you point that out. I have thought of are two possible solutions to this: 1. Make the current error message clearer, but make sure that it's correct for both cases 2. Create a special case for trying to import itself. I personally think the second option would be superior. If necessary, we could create an error that inherits from ImportError for this special case, but I think modifying the message will be enough. This message — or something similar — could be used for when the program is trying to import itself: "ImportError: partially initialized module 'tkinter' can't import itself" Since this isn't a too uncommon mistake, changing the error message for this case could both help aid the learning process and make people less scared of tracebacks, since the error message would actually give some valuable information — and possibly help them solve the error.