Programmer (hardware)
In field of computer hardware, the term programmer refers to a hardware device that configures a programmable non-volatile circuits such as EEPROM or programmable logic circuits.
In the early days of computing, before terminal and graphical display devices, a progrmmer was a device used to configure a program for a computer. It usually consisted on switches and LEDs, where instructions had to be entered one by one by setting the switches in a series of "on" and "off" positions. The positions of the switches corresponded to computer instructions, similar to how assembly language is used today. Such hardware programmers are almost never seen or used today.
See also: hardware description language