Is side loading the only way that code requiring root can easily get on a phone though? What about USB debugging?
IMO There is a slight flaw to how this question is worded. It's not that they block you from running code that you need to be root to run (you'll just get insufficient perms errors) it's just that you're not root. You could write the code to write to /system, and it will run it just will not work. Thus, you need to utilize some sort of local privilege escalation. That is it's own equally semi-sticky wicket.
It seems like every time I hope for a reasonable solution like this I get let down substantially though.