The way I look at it, a virus can be any bit of code or any program meant to cause harm of malicious nature, or destroy/damage data on any given system

As far as i know, it isn't the intent that makes a virus a virus. A virus is usually described as any coding that can replicate itself. This is very similar to biological viruses. Whether it is intended to do harm or not does not dictate its classification.

From TrendMicro:
What is a Virus?
A computer virus is a program – a piece of executable code – that has the unique ability to replicate. ..
Other than that minor point...it was a nice tut.

-NeuTron