Microsoft ACCESS ?

I am contemplating converting a project from VBA/Excel to ACCESS for these reasons :

- programming language simularities

- ACCESS can be converted to MDE which I understand makes access to the code more difficult than Excel/VBA

- Deploying the final product with the ACCESS Run Time file makes the project almost an 'executable'


Issues that I've learned :

- there are companies claiming to have programs that can display the project code
allowing others to "steal the code" making it not much better than Excel

- creating a true executable is not possible due Microsoft copyright/licensing and ACCESS
is designed in such a way that prevents creating a true executable


Learn another language ?

I am not averse to learning another language but unable to determine what other
language is similar to VBA (reduce the learning curve) and has the ability to:

- create a database with GUI similar to a spreadsheet

- have the ability to add buttons / images / other controls so the presentation is pleasing to the end user

- be able to add hyperlinks to URLs'

- 'dig down' into the data like Excel Filtering


Overall the final goal is to be able to create a user friendly GUI database for deployment on a desktop system, that
has reasonable security preventing re-creation of the program coding and can be made into an executable to further assist
with code security.

So ... ACCESS or ... If NOT ACCESS ... then what ? Java ? Oracle ? C ?
What other language/s do you use and why ?

Thank you for your assistance.