Which type of virtualization simplifies programming by allowing applications to operate independently of the underlying hardware?

The correct choice is hardware access virtualization. This type of virtualization abstracts the hardware from the applications, providing a standardized interface that applications can use without having to concern themselves with the specifics of the physical hardware they are running on. This allows developers to write applications that can be deployed on various hardware platforms without modification, simplifying the programming process significantly.

By creating a layer that interacts with the hardware, hardware access virtualization enables better resource management and provides capabilities such as isolation and scalability. As applications can run in environments that may differ in hardware configurations, this flexibility promotes easier development and quicker deployment.

The other types of virtualization focus on different aspects of computing. Software virtualization primarily deals with abstracting the operating system environment, while network and storage virtualization pertain to their respective areas of network and storage resource management. While they may have their own benefits in programming and infrastructure management, they do not specifically address the independence of applications from the hardware layer in the same way that hardware access virtualization does.