There's many examples of hardware currently in use that can be programmed using software rather than a soldering iron (or more modern equivalents), but they tend to be within the realm of electronic rather than software engineering.
At a previous job I wrote software for a manufacturing company, and it was a real eye-opener to see one of the head engineers there - who had never in his life wrote a program, as we would understand it - modifying the complex ladder logic of a PLC[1] that operated parts of the factory, while I made changes to the software on the controlling PC. I realised that we were doing essentially the same thing, just in completely different spheres of operation.
Another example would be FPGAs, for relatively cheaply one can get a board with such a chip on it, and prototype all sorts of hardware designs essentially by writing software (in VHDL or Verilog). Again I've not done it personally but a friend of mine in smartcard research does this all the time, and doesn't call himself a software developer either even though it's really the same thing, just a different application to the usual general purpose machine.
At a previous job I wrote software for a manufacturing company, and it was a real eye-opener to see one of the head engineers there - who had never in his life wrote a program, as we would understand it - modifying the complex ladder logic of a PLC[1] that operated parts of the factory, while I made changes to the software on the controlling PC. I realised that we were doing essentially the same thing, just in completely different spheres of operation.
Another example would be FPGAs, for relatively cheaply one can get a board with such a chip on it, and prototype all sorts of hardware designs essentially by writing software (in VHDL or Verilog). Again I've not done it personally but a friend of mine in smartcard research does this all the time, and doesn't call himself a software developer either even though it's really the same thing, just a different application to the usual general purpose machine.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller