A method of building a natural language understanding application is provided. The method includes receiving at least one electronic record containing programming code and creating executable code from the programming code. Further, the executable code, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to create a parse and an interpretation of a sequence of input tokens, the programming code includes an interpret-block and the interpret-block includes an interpret-statement. Additionally, the interpret-statement includes a pattern expression and the interpret-statement includes an action statement.