“The art of virus creation seems to be lost. Let’s not confuse a virus for malware, trojan horses, worms, etc. You can make that garbage in any kiddie scripting language and pat yourself on the back, but that doesn’t make you a virus author. You see, creating a computer virus wasn’t necessarily about destruction. It was about seeing how widespread your virus can go while avoiding detection. It was about being clever enough to outsmart the anti-virus companies. It was about innovation and creativity. A computer virus is like a paper airplane in many regards. You fold your airplane in clever and creative ways and try to make it fly as far as possible before the inevitable landing. Before the world wide web, it was a challenge to distribute a virus. With any luck, it would infect anything beyond your own computer. With even more luck, your virus would gain notoriety like the Whale Virus or the Michelangelo Virus… ”

https://cranklin.wordpress.com/2016/12/26/how-to-create-a-virus-using-the-assembly-language/