Decade ago, I bought a lot of partial reels of resistors to seed my stock. This included an 0201.
I protoboarded a circuit with 8 opamps, needing something like 8 x 1 megaohm resistors. The only resistor I had with the right value was this 0201, and there was no room to daisy chain resistors in series. I wasn't even really worried. If I can see it and pick it up with tweezers, I can solder it. IIRC, I was able to stretch the solder bead between 2 pads to hold these little guys, so I didn't even have to cook up anything special. Back then, I didn't even have a microscope.
I've never seen writing on a resistor smaller than 0603. That's nuthin' but business as usual. Easiest way to handle them is with a vacuum pickup. Drop it onto fluxed or pasted pads, and it won't blow away with your next sneeze. Then grip with tweezers to hand solder it, once you have everything setup. That way, the first time you get the tweezers on it and position it is the last time. You just have to fiddle with it long enough to get the soldering iron onto the pad.
The parts smaller than 0603 are a pain because even picking them up with a vacuum pickup is a challenge. Back then I was just dumping them out and using tweezers. Did I lose a 20 or 30? Yeah probably. But aside from getting it from tape to board thing, the only other issue is eye strain. I remember after soldering them, they just disappeared. All I could see were the solder beads.
*Edit: opened 'er up and looked at it under the microscope. It was an 0402. And I did just stretch the bead to make it fit. Under the microscope, I am sure I could do 0201 just as easy. It looks fairly giant, actually. 20 mil across is twice the width of an SSOP pin.
0402 are sometimes useful to me for prototyping. You can cut a trace as small as 8/8 to add a resistor, and it'll just fit without bridging to neighboring traces (toner transfer board, no soldermask). Neat as a button.